Hey, I'm hoping someone can help me out, here's my situation

I have a linux machine up and running samba. What I am trying to do is connect my windows xp machine to the Linux machine using a samba domain. This way the password authentication will be done on the samba server. Hopefully that makes some sense. Anyways I've got samba set up, so that if I log into windows xp as different users I am able to access the users own directory through network neighborhood. For example if I log in as tunarle I can access /home/tunarle and if I log in as mj I can access /home/mj. This works fine except it is not using samba as a domain, just simply a shared folder. When I right click on my computer and type in the domain name to use ... in this case "arcserv" ... I get the following error "a domain controller for the domain arcserv could not be contacted". What I have is my linux machine hooked up to my internet router and my windoze box also hooked up to my router. Could this be the problem? Do I need to buy a switch or hub instead of a router, since the router runs its dhcp junk? Could this be messing it up? Anyways any ideas, I'd be willing to think about would be great. To set this up I did it pretty much on my own the first time and it didn't work. Then the second time I followed that ibm tutorial word for word and it still doesn't work. Anyways heres my smb.conf file to take a look at, maybe I miss typed or missed something in there. Thanks

# /etc/samba/smb.conf
# samba configuration file
# last updated July 26, 2003

[global]
;basic server settings
workgroup = arcserv
netbios name = arc
server string = Arctic Server Running %v
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_SNDBUF=8192 SO_RCVBUF=8192

;PDC settings
os level = 64
preferred master = true
local master = true
domain master = true

;security settings
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
log level = 2
max log size = 50

;user profiles and directories
logon home = \\%L\%U\
logon drive = Z:
logon path = \\%L\profiles\%U
logon script = netlogon.bat
add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd -d /dev/null -g machines -s /bin/false -M %u
unix password sync = yes
passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
passwd chat = *New*UNIX*password* %n\n *Retype*new*UNIX*password* %n\n *Enter*new*UNIX*password* %n\n *Retype*new*UNIX*password* %n\n *passwd: *all*authentication*tokens*updated*successfully*

#shares

[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no
writeable = yes

[profiles]
path = /home/samba/profiles
writeable = yes
browseable = no
create mask = 0600
directory mask = 0700

[netlogon]
comment = Network Logon Service
path = /home/netlogon
read only = yes
browseable = no
write list = mj

Tunarle:

I haven't kicked around with Linux domains yet, but i have had quite a bit of experience with Wido$e 2K Advanced Server. Hopefully something will carry over.
In windo$e, to have a domain, you need to have whats called an "active directory". This basically is the process of creating a Domain controller that all of the login scripts look for. This allows you to have profiles and access rights spread over a network, so you can have an administrator account for you and maybe user accounts for the kids and you wouldn't have to have all of the accounts created locally. You just tell the computer to log onto the domain, and it pulls all the information off the domain server. The problem is, i am not quite sure where you need to look. Secondly, you are going to need to write a script to autoexecute if you want the shared volumes to be mapped at startup when you log in.
Finally, i don't think that you need to purchase any additional equipment. You might just need to turn off DHCP to the one router port (if possible, if not, you could set up a DHCP server on the linux box you want to have as the domain controller) and set a static IP to the shared linux box, so that your computers can go right where to look. Theoretically, you could have all computers on a DHCP service using the routers, but you would need to have samba/netbios names for every computer, and that every computer could recognize them. Its prolly easier at the moment to just have a static IP set on the linux box.

I am not sure how much this will help as i haven't quite played with that much in linux. Sorry, but theory only goes so far!

daemon

Well, I have some experience using domains with samba, it's true that according to daemon_14 you should have namely active directory to become a domain controller. While this is true for the next generation of MS domains, it is not the case with NT4 domains. You still can have what you want by creating this old domain model using samba.

Ok... about your case, have you add machine trust account to your system, and update smbpasswd with your system account? Since before you can use samba domain, you must have your client machines registered to samba domain.

Yes I have added machine trust ... here is exactly what I did to do so

-first of all the windows box is named arctic

useradd -g machines -d /dev/null -c "arctic" -s /bin/false arctic$
passwd -l arctic$
smbpasswd -a -m arctic

This is the correct way to add machine trust to the system, right?

I don't see a "domain logon = yes" in you smb.conf [globals] section. Without it you will not be able to use samba as a domain controller. Hope this helps.

Steve

I think you should also try to

smbpasswd -a root

It's sth like the Domain Admin Group in the NT. You will need this when you will have to connect the Win PC to smb domain.