Slackware machine as SAMBA PDC and mail server
 

Hi,

I am thinking of switching from a Windows 2000 PDC/mail server to a Slackware one.

Now, coming from the Windows world, mail boxes are either created with, or linked to, domain user accounts. This makes it easier to manage users, plus a user's login and email passwords are the same, making it easier for the clients.

So what I want to know is, how can this be done with SAMBA and whatever mail server that is best suited to the job (sendmail?).

Other than SAMBA and the mail server, what other software will be required? I would also like something like "Norton for Exchange" that can scan incoming attachments for worms and viruses, since my clients are all Windows, and are running Outlook...

And not that I mind the command line (none of the Linux servers I run now have X installed), but if I am going to move to Linux full time, I would like to have something to look at, probably FluxBox. Are there any graphical user management programs like the "Computers and Users" management program in Windows 2000?

i would have to suggest getting a book on SAMBA and avoiding sendmail.

This is a link to an OLD copy of Using Samba (O'Reilly):

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/book/

You'll probably want to look at something that covers samba 3.0 but this can give you an idea of what you have to do as far as setting up a PDC. For email, I'd suggest postfix or qmail as they were built with security in mind unlike sendmail which has a poor track record of security holes (they are always being patched but still...i dont trust sendmail). As far as the Norton for Exchange thing I don't know. But there is spam assasin for spam

For setting up qmail, Clamav (anti-virus), and a slew of other nifty open source projects, check out: www.qmailrocks.com

I also recommend cross-referencing www.lifewithqmail.com as they have similiar but different instructions on setup. I prefer the lifewithqmail for just the qmail portion...

And block away a solid weekend to get all of this working properly. qmail does require a good DNS setup so I hope you have that experience under your belt as well. If you need to set up a DNS server, I recommend djbdns (aka tinydns) from the maker of qmail. it's... tiny. and works great. :)

I was just throwing sendmail out there, I wasn't sure if that was the best tool for the job.

I have heard about qmail and ClamAV while doing some research on this, so those will be my first projects.

I have dual redundant Windows 2000 DNS servers now, so that won't be a problem.

I also intend to get The Official SAMBA-3 HOWTO.

And since nobody mentioned it, can I assume that the SAMBA user accounts can be used with qmail?

OK, I have setup SAMBA 3 as a PDC and Windows 98 to XP clients are logging on without any major problems (though I don't like the registry edits required on XP clients, it is going to complicate future installations). I can't get the roaming profiles to work yet, but that isn't my concern right now.

My main concern now is Windows clients changing their passwords. At the moment, when a Windows NT (meaning NT to XP) client tries to change their password, they get the message that the domain is not available. The SAMBA logs say something about an error involoving password length, but I have tried every password length between 5 and 8, and they all give the same error.

Am I missing something? I have heard about PAM and LDAP, are these required? I added this to my smb.conf, but it didn't help:

Anyone?

you should also have
in your smb.conf but it probably wont help with the password length error

BTW I also use pw synchronization and it works fine for me, the clients only get weird error if their pw is too short. If u r using PAM you can try to change password in linux via 'passwd' to something u want, if it will change without any warning its good enough password which would be accepted from samba clients too.

I do have "unix password sync = yes" set, I just didn't post it.

Are you using PAM? Do you have a similar "passwd chat" line?

I use PAM, this is relevant section from my smb.conf
EDIT: BTW Forgot to mention that my samba runs on RedHat 9, maybe thats why passwd chat will be different (Slackware asks for current pw before it asks for new one)