[Samba] Mutli-Homed Subnetting - Advice please

[Charlie]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:41 PM,  <jools at oss4all.plus.com> wrote:

> 1) I assume that as the NICs are on the same server (PDC & WINS)  the WINS
> server part of Samba will store both NIC IPs in the wins.dat file and that
> it'll answer WINS queries from both subnet without a problem. Dynamic data
> will be stored on the PDC so I assume this will be easy. Am I on safe
> ground here?

My WINS servers have 2 to 6 NICs each.  No problems there.

> 2) I plan to have a server on each subnet that will hold the static data
> and act as BDCs relieving the load on the PDC. Effectively, the content
> will be identical but as staff update data on one, is there a way of
> binding the server shares together so one updates the other. I know you
> can bind two drives on a unix box together with mount --bind. Has anyone
> tried binding two samba shares together? Is it easier to script an rsync
> -u .

I would make one machine a WINS, DNS, and PDC server with no shares
other than the logon share and possibly user homes.  Then I'd set up
two more servers that did nothing but share files, with 2 NICs in
each.  Many of my file servers have 4 NICs in them and work fine.
Complexity is the enemy of reliability - I would avoid synchronizing
shares and instead architect so that a single set of shares can be
reached by all.  NICs are cheaper than the time it takes to build
reliable synchronized file shares.

> 3) Finally, I need to run login scripts based on group membership but with
> static data shares mounted on a different server depending on the subnet
> you're on. Any tips on stacking login scripts? Can samba do this.

You can dynamically generate your logon scripts.  See here:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/exampleadvancedsambaloginscript/

> Any hints and tips appreciated. I have limited time to do this and set up
> three web servers with limited time for testing but that's life.

I've found keeping my PDC/logon servers separate from my "heavy
lifter" file servers saves me much pain; I can work on login and
authentication issues separately from load and permissions problems.
I also use DHCP to set my windows clients to "hybrid" mode.

        option netbios-dd-server 192.168.0.1;
        option netbios-node-type 8;

# 1    B-node: Broadcast - no WINS
# 2    P-node: Peer - WINS only.
# 4    M-node: Mixed - broadcast, then WINS
# 8    H-node: Hybrid - WINS, then broadcast
#  It should be obvious that this is a bit-mapped value, more info in
RFCs 1001 and 1002

  You can really clog up a network fast with broadcast name
resolution, so you want to restrict that as much as possible.

--Charlie