All righty, I've got an interesting question. Also, 1st off I am not looking for commands or any of that, just want an idea logically or how other people do these types of things.

The overall question centers around users on a network. 1st off are there really any decent automated ways of addings users/passwords to a Linux system? A script perhas? Next thing would be configuring directories and permissions for those said users to utilize the network resources. Like I have seen from like the smb.conf file (examples in it I mean) it gives like a %n (or some variable like that) to indicate different users who log in. Can this be done with setting your directories and permissions too? Also, when I was tinkering with my smb.conf file last night I was adding the section in for the smb password file...and it got me wondering. Would it be feasable (and perhaps more efficient??) to say let one separate server handle ONLY usernames and passwords while the Samba server does its job of handling shares/files.

I'm not really sure if I made myself clear here or not...I guess I am just wanting to know if it's possible to make say a Samba server more automated and efficient with handling users, passwords, and permissions. Because it does get kinda tedious just adding users and passwords over and over again, configuring permission settings for a certain directory, and what not. I am not seeking people to give me step by step instructions how or commands...but just real world or even basic scenarios on how it could be done. Has anyone here done anything like what I am talking about? I am using Samba specifically but I am sure it could be applied to the other servers as well. Any thoughts or ideas?

P.S. As a side note, aside from my tinkerking last night...the idea for this also came from the fact that here I am at school and I can't get into my personal network share b/c the file server (no doubt a Windows one too) is down or had a brain fart. This happens occasionally here at school.

Open ldap ..

You can forward all your authentication requests to a LDAP server on a different box by mentioning it in smb.conf with the ip address of ldap server. This openldap+samba combination sounds to me 'the most robust' working scenario.

If you've got so many users to handle... Go for Open LDAP.

Actually for my home scenario I don't have that many users...but I was wondering how one would do it on a larger scale.

Hi,

I believe you're looking for the Samba3-ByExample, available at http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/
on this page, you also find the Samba3-HOWTO, which will give you all the command you need...

I read through the Samba3-ByExample, which is very good reading, and very easy to understand, since it's built on real-life scenarii... unfortunatly I never took time to play around with it.
Hope this helps