[Samba] Is the PDC always needed?

[Gaiseric Vandal]

To break the problem into 3 separate parts:

1.  Logging in to a domain controller when the domain controller is on a 
different subnet.
2.  Accessing file shares when the domain controller is on a different 
subnet.
3.  LDAP backend.


1.  Logging into the domain controller
If the clients don't have access to a WINS server (either a real wins 
server or a proxy to a wins server) they won't be able to find the login 
server.   If you can enable the WINS server on the BDC, you can then 
configure your windows clients IP settings to use the BDC's IP as the 
WINS server.     it isn't the recommended way to do it but it should 
help figure out if WINS really is the issue.

"nbtstat -c" should show somthing like

     MYBDC <20> ip.address.of.bdc
     MYDOMAIN <1B> ip.address.of.bdc
     MYDOMAIN <1C> ip.address.of.bdc


1B and 1C are browser and controller entries.



2.  Accessing file shares

If you are browsing for file shares access as subnet, you will need WINS 
access.
If manually try to connect via host name (e.g with the windows explorer 
OR the "net use" or "net view"  commands) WINS should not be  is not 
needed but DNS needs to be working.   So exisiting connections, or 
connections mapped via login script should be OK.

If connecting via hostname doesn't work, try connecting using the name 
of the IP.    (If the server has a name resolution issue, that could 
potentially cause connection issues-  unlikely but it happened to me once.)


3.  Authentication

Samba doesn't actually care it the BDC and PDC use the same LDAP 
server(s).  You should use either the same LDAP server OR have LDAP 
servers that synchronize, otherwise changes on one server are not 
replicated.  But-  in terms of testing authentication  if your user ids 
and passwords are the same on both machines you probably don't need to 
worry about this for the moment.  But it will cause problems for you at 
some point.





On 03/27/12 11:49, David Noriega wrote:
> The file shares are on a domain member. Is it that having the BDC as a
> wins proxy and more importantly simply having wins on causing this
> issue? We are on the university's network and they have their own wins
> server for their own system wide windows domain. Our users primarily
> logon from their office machines which are part of the university's
> domain, not ours(which is only in our computer lab).
>
> I'm just confused since the BDC has access to its own ldap server and
> watching the logs when the setting is up high I see the domain member
> which hosts the file shares is authenticating on the BDC. Yet why is
> it when the PDC failed, users couldn't access their file share(which
> yes is separate from logging onto a windows computer).
>
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 5:33 AM, Jorell<JorellF at fastmail.net>  wrote:
>> On 3/26/2012 9:27 AM, David Noriega wrote:
>>> Maybe my understanding is flawed but I thought the purpose of the BDC
>>> was in the case of the PDC going offline, users could still use the
>>> system. Just this morning our PDC failed with bad memory, yet users
>>> were unable to map their network drive. The PDC is in our office while
>>> the file server is in the server room where its been setup as a domain
>>> member. On the server room subnet is its own BDC with its own ldap
>>> server. Checking the logs I see that the server room BDC is listed as
>>> the local domain server. The only thing that comes to mind is the BDC
>>> does point to the PDC as the wins server. Is that the issue? Is there
>>> a way around it?
>>>
>> The PDC/BDC controls logging onto the network.
>> Network file shares are different, what server was hosting the "network
>> drive"? If the PDC also hosted the network drive then they would also go
>> down.
>>
>>
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>