Windows User/Printer/File Server
 

I am now ready to use the server I have been planning.

On the advice of many I have used Ubuntu Server without a GUI, but have installed webmin to assist with the configuration.

Firstly I want to setup windows user authentication. I want users to have their own private drive which can be mapped to their /home/<user> directory. Then I to setup a shared drive which can be access by all, mapped to /home/shared.

Is samba the only service I need?

Do I need winbind?
Do I need LDAP?

If you only have a few users, you don't need ldap, tdbsam should be fine. From mmeory, Samba suggest up to 250/300 max for tdbsam.

You certainly don't need winbind. You may find it nice, but I run my server without it, since all users are valid unix users as well


Edit - read http://us3.samba.org/samba/docs/man/...n/winbind.html

Will I need to setup a DHCP server too or can the switch act as a DHCP server instead?

I don't know, can your switch act as a dhcp server? There's no reason it needs to be the same box.

What services do I really need then?

Am I right in saying Samba will take care of the different windows user logins, private and shared folders, and printer sharing?

For the purely samba side, smb and nmb will suffice. I use CentOS, not Ubuntu as a rule, and with that, starting samba starts both of those, whereas on other distros I don't believe that is the case.

You'll also want cups for you printers, plus the general services to run your system, such as syslog. Without knowing exactly what Ubuntu runs, and what else you may want to do, it's a pretty tough question to answer. For example, you probably want ntp or similar running, but it's not absolutely necessary (that's the network time protocol service), but you will need networking.

I suspect you are really asking what additional services do you need, and the answer is in the first line above.

So in a way its as simple as setting up samba on the server. Adding a few users accounts into centos. Connecting the windows machine to use network authentication. And thats it?

Yep. There's a good howto on the samba site here http://us3.samba.org/samba/docs/man/...html#id2549548

Thanks, I'll let you know how I get on.