Samba Domain Difficulty with a new File Server
 

Hello,
I am in the process of upgrading the Linux file server at our International School to a new machine. I have installed Conectiva 10 with Samba to allow our Windows 2000 workstations to connect. Everything seems to be ok if I join the domain normally.

Basically the new server is supposed to be a newer replica of the old one. I copied all the samba files, passwd, groups, shadow, etc. from the old to the new. I want the configuration of the new one to be such that I can unplug the old one from the network, plug the new one in, and the workstations not know the difference upon logon.

But if I don't dis-join and rejoin our domain, the workstations don't recognize there is a domain (via samba). There are almost 200 workstations in our lan and I prefer to not have to dis-join and rejoin all of them.

So I guess my question is: Is it possible to facilitate this process I'm trying to accomplish? Am I missing some files, to be copied, from the old server that samba needs to talk to Windows? Or does Windows need to see a new key or something from the new server to make the communication happen? This info should be stored somewhere that I can copy to the new server, and I hopeit isn't inside each Windows machine...

If anyone has any info or ideas, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks.

Logan

Well we are trying to figure out a better way to recover a samba box rather than rejoining the network. It might help you to know there are a bunch more files under /var/lib/samba that I know are needed.

If by moving those that fixes it let me know, the Samba community almost has 0 information on disaster recovery. This I find very disapointing in a corporate enviroment.


It might be something with the domain SID but I have played around with that with not much luck. I have completely changed my domain sid manually on a working samba box and everything continued to work and the test workstation could just log in just fine. Now if I rebuild my samba box (I use an mondo image) I will find out what happens. One thing I can tell you is if I use a different computer all together now matter what files I recover it forces me to rejoin every workstation something we are trying to rememdy.

Its funny I thought Samba would be easier to recover than an NT box but so far they seem to be about the same.