[Samba] samba at lists.samba.org

[Mark Foley]

I am planning up upgrading my AD/DC from Samba version 4.8.2 to the most recent
version in my Slackware distro which is currently 4.15.13.

In previous threads in this maillist I was advised that the best route to
achieve this was to add a 2nd domain controller, then promote that one and
demote the original. I'm in the process of setting up a 2nd DC to that end.

I thought I ask questions as I encounter issues, and I've got a couple right
off.

1) The howto doc https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Setting_up_Samba_as_an_Active_Directory_Domain_Controller#Preparing_the_Installation,
at the very beginning says,

  "Verify that the /etc/hosts file on the DC correctly resolves the
  fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) and short host name to the LAN IP address of
  the DC. For example:

  127.0.0.1     localhost
  10.99.0.1     DC1.samdom.example.com     DC1

  The host name and FQDN must not resolve to the 127.0.0.1 IP address or any
  other IP address than the one used on the LAN interface of the DC."

The current DC (hostname MAIL) has it's /etc/host file set up as described above, but what
about a 2nd DC? Right now, the machine I'm working on to be the 2nd DC (hostname
DC1) uses dhcp and is statically assigned an IP by dhcpd running on MAIL.

Should the new secondary DC1 also have it's IP statically assigned and not use DHCP?

2) The next thing the wiki doc says to do is to provision the DC. Will doing so
on this 2nd DC interfer with the current/primary DC?

My current DC was provisioned with --dns-backend=BIND9_FLATFILE. The wiki doc
says "do NOT use BIND9_FLATFILE, it is not supported and will be removed in a
future Samba version." Given that this machine will be the AD/DC for a dozen
Windows 10/11 workstations, What would be the recommended alternative
dns-backend?

That's enough for now!

Thanks --Mark