Samba as Primary Domain Controller for windows network
 

Hello

I'm trying to setup my Linux server to host the profiles for my Windows clients. At the moment, all of my PCs and the linux server (which is the Primary Domain Controller) are connected through a Linksys router, which has DNS on it for resolving things like google etc. It does not resolve Internal PC names, as far as I know. I wouldn't expect it to.

I believe that i have set up my samba configuration correctly, as I followed a howto perfectly. However, when I try and add my Windows 2000 client to the domain, I get the error:

"The domain ZYZ is either invalid or does not exist"

It is the case that I need to set up my LInux server, which I have set up as the Primary DOmain Controller, to be a DNS server for the INTERNAL network?

Or, do I just set:
name resolve order = wins lmhosts hosts bcast

and run a WINS server on the Linux server?
When roaming profiles/active directory is setup on a Windows 2000 server, windows make that domian controller a DNS server.

If anyone can shed light for me, that would be great.

Hamish

Can I see your Samba config on this one?

In addition, if you want to do both DHCP and have DNS resolving dynamic hosts' names, there is a recipe that works using ISC dhcpd and bind 9. This is not necessary, I believe [and almost certainly overkill]. However, if you'd like to see how it's done, be my guest and ask away. Note that it's a lot of trouble to set up both bind and dhcpd, so be aware that it may not be worth it.

hiya

I have fixed the problem. It stemmed from my firewall.

the following ports are needed to be open (i have enabled them only from sources in the local network)
udp: 137 138
tcp : 139 445
imcp: 3 and 4

Thanks
Hamish

My next problem is that when I log in with my account "hamish" (where the whole profile folder is about 150Mb) navigation becomes very slow.

For example, when I go to My Computer, it takes about 20 seconds for My Computer to be populated with the icons, including my two automtically mounted network drives.

When I access any network drive, it is unusably slow to populate the directory.

When I log in with a different user, user1, whose profile is only 10 Mb, none of these problems occur. It runs at a native speed.

My question is:

what is causeing this slowness? Is it a result of the large profile? (althou 140Mb is not actually that much), or is there something I have to alter in my smb.conf to make it cope with large profiles?

Thanks
Hamish

I've seen Windows 2000 choke on large profiles. I think this is mostly your client's problem.. though I'm not sure. I haven't done any research on it, so.. Google?

after further tests, it isn't the profile size. made a new user with a profile 2 times the size of the one I was having problems with.

It worked fine.

It might be a corrupt file in that user's account

hamish