[Samba] Sharing passdb.tdb between two or more Samba servers?

[Rowland Penny]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2017 07:13:19 -0500
Bernard Fay <bernard.fay at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, our Samba servers are configured as standalone.  Windows clients
> and Xenservers for storage repositories are connecting to these
> shares.
> 
> What does that change for the Unix users as they have to be in the
> passdb.tdb file anyway???
> 
> 

OK, you asked ;-)

Lets say that windows user 'fred' wants to store something on
fileserver1, then 'fred' must be a Samba user and a Unix user on
fileserver1. 
If user 'fred' doesn't want to type in a password when they connect to
fileserver1, then the Samba user 'fred' will have to have the same
password, so you have two places to manage the users password if it is
changed.

You now decide to add another Samba server, fileserver2 and rsync
passdb.tdb to this, but this isn't enough, you will have to create the
users in /etc/passwd as well, I certainly wouldn't want to sync this as
well, it 'might' break something.

You now have three places to manage the users password if it is changed.

A new user 'george' must be added, so you add the user to windows, then
go to fileserver1 and create the Unix user and then the Samba user. You
then need to go to fileserver2 and add the user again.

You haven't said if the windows machines are in a domain, but if they
are, all you need to do is make the fileservers into Unix domain
members and you then will only have one place to manage users.

Rowland