[Samba] Must you "net join" for the Samba machine to become a domain member?

[Karnowski, David]

> When you manually add the server to the domain, the problem is that
> Samba doesn't know what the password is.  You can set one with the
> 'net' command I think, however it's much easier to delete the manually
> added computer and run 'net join', that way Samba does the adding and
> you're guaranteed that it will know the machine account credentials.
...
> It'd strongly recommend doing a 'net join', as the Samba configuration
> will be metaphorically held together with sticky tape if you don't, and
> I wouldn't be at all surprised if it failed at a later date for
> seemingly no reason.

Thanks for your help again Adam. The problem on our side is that the
Windows world and Unix world are administered by separate departments.
They're not going to be sharing administrative passwords with each other.
I am still doing that "net join" but using my own domain account (which
is not an administrator) and it seems to be OK provided someone manually
added the machine account on the Windows side. I was hoping to have it 
totally automated (on the Unix side at least) with no hard-coded passwords,
but I guess it can't work this way. I'll keep my open for that "failing at 
a later date for seemingly no reason" thing :-)

thanks again,
David