[Klug-general] Samba....

[Peter Childs]

On 26 April 2011 20:07, Laurence Southon <laurence at southon.uk.net> wrote:
> On 26/04/11 18:27, Peter Childs wrote:
>> I've been asked to set up a File Server for a network of windows based
>> machines, So I'm guessing Samba here..... I guess I need to set up
>> Samba to run as a Windows PDC to sort out security and get all the
>> Windows XP Pro (I think thats what they have) to join the "Network"
>> Unless I can get the Samba server look like AD, but I'm not sure how
>> to go about this... They want passwords and some "Security" over the
>> files on the file server.....
>>
> You can have username:passwd security without a PDC, and unless the
> workstations definitely are XP Pro they won't be able to join a domain.
>
> It's a lot of work to set up the domain and then join each machine to
> it. Personally I would avoid it, and another downside is that by default
> Samba will use roaming profiles which will likely lead to trouble in the
> long run. You can disable that but it's yet another setting to get dead
> right.
>

Ok, That makes sence.

So if I set up a Samba Based File server without it being a PDC how do
I add users and allow people to set passwords simply?

Is there a standard Web admin thing I can install and use ie Webmin?

>> While doing a bit of reading up on doing this I worked out it should
>> be possible to use Samba to do shared home directories on Linux and it
>> should work *better* than NFS.
>
> Yes, homes are easy to set up in Samba. Be careful where you place them,
> and consider user quotas to stop disc usage getting out of control.

Fine, makes sense, you get the same issues with NFS, from what I can
see the security should be better using Samba than it is with NFS....

>>
>> Also can I join the Wins bit of the SMB to my DNS and not have so much
>> duplication of service.
> Samba will become a WINS server, just put 'wins support = yes' in the
> [global] part of smb.conf. Job done.
>
> Samba is a leviathan, there are literally hundreds of possible settings,
> any of which can trip you up. Good place to start is the official
> documentation:
>
> http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/
>
> Feel free to fire questions, but a couple of tips on things that are
> guaranteed to drive you up the wall at some point:
>
> You can grant whatever permissions you like in Samba, but if the
> appropriate Unix permissions are not in place, then they won't work, and
> you won't know why.
>
> Some config changes in Samba take effect straightaway, others require a
> Windows logon/logoff or even reboot to take effect, so always worth
> trying that before giving up.
>
> Good luck!
>
> LS
> --
> Laurence Southon
> Tiger Computing, Bexley
> www.tiger-computing.co.uk
>
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Peter