[Samba] MSDFS on [homes] share for two samba servers

[Jonathan Buzzard]

On Wed, 2012-01-11 at 19:28 +0100, Michal Bruncko wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> we have two samba servers on two localities with bigger distance between 
> them. On both localities there are organizational staff working. And I 
> am trying to configure homedirectories for all of staff in this way:
> - all users will have same beginning part of URL path where is their 
> homedir located (i.e. \\files.example.com\loginname) for unification and 
> central acces
> - but because the lower speed link between both localities there is need 
> to locate homedirs:
>   -- for locality A - on server A on that locality
>   -- for locality B - on server B on that locality
> 
> fine, thats are requirements. So I have decided to use MSDFS in 
> combination with [homes] in this way:
> - on server A (which will acts as "files.example.com") there will be 
> homedirs MSDFS links for users on locality B pointed to their real 
> homedirs on server B (with classic symlink syntax "user_on_locality_B" 
> -> "msdfs:IP_of_server_B\user_on_locality_B" )
> So if user Bob from locality B will access its homedir, it will be 
> transparently redirected from Server A to its homedir on closest server B.
> 

I don't think that will work because a share must be all MSDFS. So the
[homes] share on server A cannot serve up both home directory shares to
local users and do MSDFS redirection for none local users at the same
time.

The best way I know of is for their to be a third server say
homes.example.com that does MSDFS redirection for all users. It is not
doing much so a light weight virtual machine will do the job. That does
work and has been for a number of years now.

JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jonathan (at) buzzard.me.uk
Fife, United Kingdom.