[Samba] No good way to migrate 4.1 on Server A to 4.7.6 on New Server B

[Rowland Penny]

On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 04:29:26 -0500
Glenn Bergeron via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:

> After many, many, many hours of trying, and lots of research both on
> this list, the Samba Wiki and elsewhere, I think I’ve finally come to
> the conclusion that there is no way to seamlessly migrate between
> servers.
> 
>  
> 
> Backing up and restoring (using samba_backup) doesn’t work.
> Permissions hell with Windows.

The old samba_backup script wasn't very good and there wasn't actually
a restore script. The latest Samba versions have a new way of backing
up and restoring Samba through samba-tools.

> Joining the new 4.7.7 server to the old 4.1 DC server, waiting for
> replication, then demoting the old server doesn’t work. It’s missing
> all the GPO files, RSAT utils either don’t work or barely work (no
> computer accounts listed for example), and workstations have their
> System Events log filled with not being able to find or connect to
> the domain server, DCOM errors relating to permissions, etc. 

When you join a new DC, quite a lot of the required DNS records are not
created until you restart Samba or until samba_dnsupdate runs.
As for the GPO problems, They will not be on the new DC until you copy
them there, this is because Sysvol is not replicated between DC's

> I’m trying to not have to tell all the users that they’re going to
> have whole new Windows profiles and lose all their settings, because
> I can’t port anything and I have to start the AD server from scratch.
 
> 
> Hasn’t anyone done this with any success? And if so, why isn’t there
> a solid document somewhere? I’m sorry I sound frustrated, but I’m at
> my limit with this what should have been a simple migration from old
> dying server to new server.
> 

I am sure that this has been done successfully, otherwise this list
would have been full of posts similar to yours.

Samba is a rapidly changing target and part of your problem could be
the large jump between your versions, 4.1 to 4.7

What OS are you using ?

Rowland