[ Thanks to jcondon
for this link. ]
“Samba is great at sharing files and printers, but it can do
much more. In this article, Daniel Robbins shows you how to
set up Samba’s Domain Controller functionality, which allows Samba
to control a Windows NT domain, process login requests, and store
roaming user profiles. He also takes a peek at the alpha version of
Samba-TNG (“the next generation”), which is the version of Samba
that will have complete Domain Controller support.”
“I have to say that I really do like Samba. I rely on Samba to
make my internal LAN (consisting of Windows NT and UNIX) work
together. Generally Samba is a great thing. But a couple of weeks
ago, I had a few Samba regrets.”
“I had all my important UNIX files shared through Samba, which
allowed me to use freebox (my FreeBSD UNIX machine) as a central
file store. And I had my NEC SuperScript 870 printer hooked up to
freebox, and shared with my Windows NT clients. Everything was
working wonderfully…so what was the problem?”
“After a bit of reflection I realized that while Samba was doing
a lot of good things, I wanted it to do more. Primarily, I was
unhappy that I had a decentralized security database: I needed to
have two accounts, one on the Samba machine and one on NT as a
local user (so that I could log in to the machine). I also needed
to make sure that the usernames and passwords on these accounts
matched up exactly. Since I’m the only one using my LAN, this was a
minor inconvenience. But nevertheless, it made Samba seem like a
bit of a hack. Not to mention the fact that the Windows NT Server
has a centralized security model! (I figured Samba should be
competitive here.) Sure, Samba worked. But could it work
better?”