Greetings!

This is my first post on these forums and I am excited to be a member! I have actually read quite a few posts and have wanted to register, however I am quite intimidated by all of your expanse of knowledge.

I am a Windows user. That will probably say enough. I have always wanted to get more involved with Linux and Unix based systems and the configuration involved, but would be starting from the beginning and it is very intimidating.

My first task seems to be a huge one. I have a small network at church and the four computers have been connected via a workgroup. These computers are all on Windows XP Professional. We recently setup broadband at the church and are now faced with security risks. We could set local security using local Group Policy, but we would like to administer this through a domain controller.

Since Windows Server 2003 is so expensive, I was looking for another option and came across Samba. It is said that you can run Samba as a primary domain controller for a Windows XP Professional domain and have extrememly similar options as if it were a Windows Server PDC.

So, I would like to set my four computers up on a Samba domain that will allow User and Computer accounts to me managed and secured.

All the computers are ready to go except for the server.....

Therein lies my question. As I am not skilled in the ways of Linux and this seems like a huge undertaking, what would your recommendations be? Should I scrap this thought and try something else? Should I put down the money for Small Business Server 2003? Or is this a good time for me to learn the ropes of Linux?

If I should continue, I would like to see if you could either point me to some documentation of this process as well as answer the following questions if you could.

1. What Linux distro should I use for my Samba server?
2. Should I setup my distro with All Options selected?
3. After installing Linux, how do I go about installing Samba?
4. Is there a good Samba configuration guide to detail setting it up for Windows workstations as PDC?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. And if you happen to be in the Indianapolis, IN area and would like to help, please feel free to post here and maybe we can talk.

Thank you all for your help and I hope to hear back from you!

No replies? I'm sad to see this! However, I do understand. I was asking quite a lot, considering I'm not a Linux user. I have been reading a lot of documents about setting up and configuring Samba, but haven't really had any luck finding out about what distro is best for setting it up to work in a Windows XP domain. Let me know if you can help. I would greatly appreciate it!

Arvida

I'm still learning Linux as well but have setup a Linux box as an internet connection sharing machine where the Linux box has 2 NICs. One Nic goes to your cable modem and the other to a Hub. The other windows machines then connect to the hub and are assigned DHCP addresses from the Linux box. I didn't setup accounts however, each Windows machine had local users. The Linux box also acted as a firewall and was very easy to setup. I was using Mandrake at the time which even has an Internet Connection Sharing Wizard that sets it up for you (even the firewall).

This would achieve your sharing the connection with all machines but you would have to administer the user access on each. I've only every used Samba for sharing folders/files.

Wow, quite a lot there Arvida, but here are my experiences.

My first effort is setting up a Samba PDC were on SuSE 9.0. All seems to go OK but it was a hard learning curve. In the end we moved to different hardware and onto Mandrake 10 community. Somewhere along this course, we decided to stay with a workgroup instead of a domain controller.

I'm tempted to retry with the PDC having now got samba working in the way I like (fast & reliable!). In essence, you can set up samba as a workgroup system and then migrate to a PDC.

Apart from the obvious entries in the smb.conf file, you need to create machine accounts for each of the XP systems. That's the bit that took me a long time to work out!

You'll also need to create shares for the netlogon directories to keep the profiles too.

I can recommend Mankdrake 10 as the included smb.conf file has all of the needed settings with easy to understand comments. All you have to do is to remove the # from the extra lines you need.

I also obtained the "Using Samba" book from O'Reilly which is pretty much the definative guide and well worth a look.

Try taking a look at post 938297 which I did for another user needing samba and see if it gets you started.

Best Regards,

Carl.

Great, thanks for the feedback! Right now we are setup using a standard XP Workgroup with local user accounts configured. We have a router that is setup for DHCP. So file sharing and internet connection sharing isn't a problem at this time. Our major concern is that we want to be able to administer the group of computers using a centralized server, that being Samba since we cannot afford a Windows 2k3 or even 2k server. I will look into getting that book as well as the other post that you sent. Thanks again!

Hi :
i think that trying make SAMBA playing as PDC is not quite convenient . i think that this method will create problems much more than it can solve . Even if the XP machines joined to a SAMBA Domain i think that many system issues will arises . i don't believe that samba server will provide central location for delivering policies to clients . scince XP try to update it's policy each 5 minutes i think that missing SYSVOL will create unwanted traffic on the network . SAMBA is great server but i don't think that it can compete Active Directory .

SEE YA

You might be interested at freebies :-)

http://freebooks.by.ru/view/SambaIn24h/

BTW my point of view is

Go with Linux, all the way... Here's why:

1- you will learn how to save $$$
2 - You will learn who it works
3- You will spend less money going out (because you're going to work all nite on it!)
and finaly
4 because you are going to be proud of what you've done!

Done give up!!

You might also want to give a look to LDAP is you're brave enough :-)

Thanks for the other responses. I am starting to think that it may be best for us to save up for Windows Server 2003. However, I am still greatly interested in learning the Linux world. I will no doubt continue to view this community and ask for help. Thanks for all the replies!

Arvida

Have you been to the www.samba.org site?

You might find some useful info here.

I also found this.
"So if you're evaluating whether or not to implement a Primary Domain Controller on your Samba server, how do you know what's the best course of action? Here's David's recommended list to evaluate whether or not it's worth your time and effort:"

Good luck...