I hate to say it but...

[Spankin Partier]

I thick I need a Windows computer now.

I've been playing with Samba as a PDC lately and I need to test out my how my settings will work on Win2k computers. If everything turns out, I'll be switching our server from a WinNT 4 to Mandrake 10.0 with Samba.

I found an online O'Reilly Samba book included with Mandrake. It's been really helpfull. http://www.comcol.nl/detail/48349.htm

I guess I could set up one of my other Linux boxes up to log in on the test server, but I still wouldn't know if the finer details are fine.

But in either case, I could always reformat that Windows machine back into something more usefull.

[Eggs]

O'Reilly is always good stuff

[Ned Slider]

Yes, I bought O'Reilly's Running Linux book when I first started with linux. It's a bit dated but the basic principles of linux don't change much. It's a great book for the basics (although not necessarily written for the newbie) if you don't want a fully fledged system admins book

I suspect the samba book will be equally good, and I see it covers version 3 so should be up to date

Please let us know what you think of it SP

Ned

[Spankin Partier]

So far it's been great. Everything that they have talked about I've been able to get going. That's a definite plus!

Most books I seen in the past will talk with only one distro in mind. And if you don't have that distro, then it's up to you to figure out how to get things to work. But this O'Rielly book does acknowledge the other distros. They explain how to determine which method you'll need to follow, then they explain each method. They touch BSD, V, and Darwin based Unix's/Linux's.

And they don't treat you like some kid in grade school either. Isn't it funny how most of the books that teach you from the ground up are full of jokes and other non-sense that just distracts you from the task at hand. I like books that just get to the point. So this one has turned out quite well for me.

[Spankin Partier]

Oh, and I just aquired a computer for Winblows err, Windows. It's a K6-400. I'm not even willing to donate 1/2 Ghz to that OS.

It'll be just enough to log in and out. That's all! No more.

[pointreyes]

Couldn't you have used vmware?

[Spankin Partier]

Huh, I never even thought about that.

I just might have to try that out.

[navin]

Virtual PC and VMWare are great products for a testing and development environment. Running a machine with 1 gig of ram I can run several virtual machines simultaneously (Including Linux (Thanks Markkuk)).

That aside..
Recently I converted a schools computers from Novell 3.1x and NT4 to samba running atop Fedora Core 2. The total accounts on the system is about 654 users and it does many things much better than their previous servers did.

Used in this environment are.

1. Samba 3.0.3
2. ACL (Access Control Lists)
3. Quotas (for students)

[netracer]

Eeeew, Novell. Sorry, I've had minor issues with Novell Printing software in the past, let's just say I'm happpy it's all on Samba now! We can even install drivers automagically!

Why go to Samba over Win2003 Server though, that's my only question...Does Samba 3.0(4?) compare well to 2003 Server as a PDC? I know I was having several issues with encrypted authentication a while back, but then again I didn't have a handy book either...

[Spankin Partier]

From what I've been reading, the only things Samba can't do are:

1. Be an Active Directory server (This might change in future releases)
2. Be a backup domain server for a Windows domain server. But apparently there are other techniques that can be used to get similar results.

What were the problems you were having exactly? I would like to know if it was sporadic or persistent so that I could tell if I may end up running into that problem too.

[navin]

Well, I've been a network admin over Windows and Novell servers and Novell had many things right including NDS. Can't say I liked their client much though. In Linux you can emulate many things such as DNS SVR records for Windows and you can do Kerberos, etc.. Samba still isn't there yet however, and if it was it would be vastly more complex than just using a Windows server. But, for a great many, it is good enough and that's what decides where many people will put their efforts.

If there were more intuitive management tools Samba could make a much bigger splash. Certainly some would point out tools such as SWAT but I'm talking about tools Joe User could put to use.


note:
Samba can work as a PDC/BDC setup using an LDAP backend pretty well. I've read of some trying to use rsync to maintain a copy of the /etc/samba/smbpasswd file but as they say that is sloppy if you have machines that maintain a trust account (computers must authenticate also) in samba (NT4, 2K, XP).

[pointreyes]

Well, I have recently discovered a major problem with (I just love it when it's a problem with a MS product not working well with another MS product ) Access 2000/2002/2003 and Windows 2003 Server using a front-end backend design. Serious lag with something as simple as trying to modify a report can take over 10 seconds from one task to another. Does this occur on a Novell network-nope. So then I tried using my Sun Solaris 9 x86 box with samba-no problem their either. Just with Windows 2003 Server (running AD). So in this case, samba is my solution until I can figure out what 2003 with AD is doing to Access applications.

[Spankin Partier]

I've noticed some serious delays when I would start to modify an Access report on a Win2k or WinNT client with our WinNT4 server. This delay never happened on Win98SE clients. But now with my Opteron, I hardly even notice it anymore. I don't know what caused that. I know it wasn't AD for I don't have that on my server. But it's probably a different problem all together.


As a side note, I've had to disable Oplock on my WinNT server since it was constantly corrupting the Access databases. If I switch to SAMBA, should I disable it there too? I'm thinking I probably should. The preformance gains aren't worth the risk.

[pointreyes]

I've noticed some serious delays when I would start to modify an Access report on a Win2k or WinNT client with our WinNT4 server. This delay never happened on Win98SE clients. But now with my Opteron, I hardly even notice it anymore. I don't know what caused that. I know it wasn't AD for I don't have that on my server. But it's probably a different problem all together.


As a side note, I've had to disable Oplock on my WinNT server since it was constantly corrupting the Access databases. If I switch to SAMBA, should I disable it there too? I'm thinking I probably should. The preformance gains aren't worth the risk.

Probably something different considering that my main development box is my dual Opteron (Wxp and 2003 ES) and it has the same length of lag as my Intel Prescott (Wxp and 2003 SS) system and my Intel Northwood (Wxp) system. The OS I'm using for my server is Small Business Server 2003 which demands you use AD. Eventually I wll be able to use Linux on that box but right now Windows is needed on it. Switching to samba was the solution for me for that lag problem. You might want to test the oplock, samba might have fixed the problem (as well as maybe MS by now).

Edit: Strange my sig does not appear on my post anymore. I'm positive it's not too big, it's one on of my earlier posts.

[navin]

You could try it via other files but I would think oplocks aren't the problem. I remember an incident on an NT4 server where there were problems with an access database. We had to get the software vendor for the access application as well as Microsoft involved on the issue. Changing oplocks made no difference and the problem was eventually traced down to another cause.