Okay So I have a few questions about Samba before I install it on a Mandrake 10 client.

Scenario: Our infrastructure is completely windows 2000, with a full Active Directory core, we have a few NT4 clients which are slowly being replaced. We want to test Mandrake as a desktop alternative to Windows.

So I have a machine with Mandrake 10 and Samba on it;

1. When I install Samba will this in anyway affect the windows 2000 infrastructure - will it need to be authroised in Active Directory etc.

2. Can anyone point me to a beginners setup guide for Samba, with full listing of options on the smb.conf file.

3. I'm not very experienced with all this stuff and from reading above - you have probably guessed that what I am trying to do is just test a Linux client logging onto a windows 2000 domain. Is Samba the correct way to do this and if not, can you suggest other ways of doing this? (including login script execution etc).

Thanks in advance to all who reply :-b

http://hr.uoregon.edu/davidrl/samba
This is a very good address.
Good luck.

http://www.samba.netfirms.com/sambconf.htm
http://us3.samba.org/samba/docs/Samba-Guide.pdf

Thanks for the links guys - I'll get reading asap, just one last quick question:

Do I need a dedicated Samba server or can I run the server on the client I am testing as well?

Ta

Sorry, but I could not resist to anwer this one :-)

There is no server / workstation is the linux world ...

There is only clients / servers (deamons)

So every machine is (or can be) a client and a server. All depends on the network manager...

So you would not need dedicated Samba server and you can run it from your test client machine without any problem :-)

Cheers, appreciate it