[Samba] Linux users and Samba 4

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 17:37 +0100, steve wrote:
> On 30/11/11 16:40, Matthieu Patou wrote:
> > Matthieu,
> > On 30/11/2011 08:09, steve wrote:
> >> Yep. I realise the 'alphaness' of Samba 4 but I think I am not alone
> >> with my issue. I think I should be easy to fix now before it goes beta.
> > Certainly true, why not trying to start working on solution on your own,
> > by doing the first move you have much more insurance that someone else
> > will help you to make it good for master tree.
> Well, I'm no developer and only have an old laptop running from a usb 
> memory stick for testing but I've made a start by adding a home 
> directory attribute to Samba 4 user database using phpldapadmin. But now 
> I'm stuck since I don't know where or how the roaming profiles are 
> stored. In Samba 3 there were stored in the /home of the user. 

The statement "In Samba 3 there were stored in the /home of the user" is
false.  They are stored where they are configured to be stored;  we do
not store profiles in home directories [and generall i think that is a
bad idea].  Samba4 provisions a shared volume for storing a user's
roaming profile.

By default something like -


> With AD 
> it seems that they are all be saved in a [profiles] share. That bit I 
> think I understand so I think the solution to single sign on with Samba 
> 4 would be linking the roaming profile to a users /home folder. Or make 
> the profiles share subfolder the /home folder for Linux. With Samba3 and 
> LDAP, all this was centralised and easy to administer. In openSUSE, YAST 
> would create an LDAP user for you and give him the Samba attributes he 
> needed. It even created his home folder too. It was simple for a linux 
> user to logon to windows and vica versa. Samba 4 takes away this 
> centralisation. It also has the inconvenience of having to use windows 
> to administer the Samba server.
> 
> I feel that Samba dev's have forgotten that Linux clients are just as 
> important as windows clients in the network. They seem to think that 
> Linux is only ever used as a server and clients are only ever windows 7!
> 
> Another bit I don't get is where is a file that is created on a windows 
> client is stored on the Samba server? The documentation is not clear 
> here. As basic as that.
> 
> Does any of this make sense?
> 
> Cheers
> Steve.