[Samba] Upgrading Samba 4 server [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Norbert Hanke]

Hi Russell,

Using extra hardware definitely helps to do such upgrades transparent to 
the users: add an additional DC, transfer FSMO roles there, demote old 
DC on existing server, upgrade or reinstall existing server, add as DC, 
transfer FSMO roles, demote temporary DC.

Even the smallest budget can afford a Raspberry Pi, which works very 
well to host Samba for a small network.It is not a luxury.

In my case I have DCs running on Debian/Raspbian, it is very stable. You 
could try CentOS on RPi, but I don't know how well it works. I was only 
partially successful with Fedora on RPi, which is not very different 
from CentOS, but it might be related to my lack of experience with Fedora.

regards,
Norbert


On 04.05.2018 04:47, Thamm, Russell via samba wrote:
> UNOFFICIAL
> I am running several small networks with Samba 4 acting as AD/DC.
>
> I want to upgrade the OS and Samba on the older servers. But I understand that to upgrade the OS, I need to do a new install (at least to get from Centos 6 to 7). I don't have the luxury of new hardware, so creating a secondary DC and taking over from PDC is not an option.
>
> These are small networks so recreating the data should be relatively trivial. But I need the process to be transparent to the users and to Windows.
>
> My idea is to:
>
> Remove all PCs from domain
> Install the latest CentOS and Samba 4 (new hard drive) on the server using the same host name, ip and domain name as before.
> Recreate users.
> Rejoin all PCs to domain.
>
> Will windows recognise the recreated domain user accounts as being the same as the old accounts?
>
> Is this approach feasible?
>
> I would appreciate any hints.
>
>
>
>
>