Topic: sme 6.0 with existing windows nt pdc

[bmoore]

Greetings all.  I suspect this one has happened before but I can't seem to find an answer with search terms.  I am trying to convince my company to drop our existing nt 4 pdc and use a sme server.  in order to accomplish this, I want to replicate all the shares and things with ibays.  however, I can't seem to connect to the sme server on the network.  I want to replicate all the users from the nt pdc and allow users to  brose shares so they never have to know the server has been replaced.  can I accomplish this before removing the nt box to keep management happy and demonstrate that sme will really work in place of the nt server.  the only one i'm concerned about are shared access data bases but I think I can make these work too. I have played with the smbpasswd command to see if I can make the sme server join the domain but I'm missing something.  I can see it in network neighbourhood but when I try and browse to the sme box, I get "network path not found.  my workgroup on the sme is set to the same name as the domain but no joy.  anyone got any ideas.  I'm game to play a bit and see if I can make this work.  thanks.  Brian.

[azche24]

Hi, Brian!

the only one i'm concerned about are shared access data bases but I think I can make these work too.

First: You will probably NOT be able to get these important and ugly "MaleWare-Access-Based-Office-Software" to work on E-smith/Samba. At least I tried with a very common german lawyer-application "RA-Micro" and i tuned all the samba stuff and it never worked. If you use that kind of stuff, then you should be very careful not to disappoint the management.  

But the rest is simple:

Just set up a decent sme-box. Do not configure as "primary-domain-controller", for this will mix up the whole stuff. Create ibays and users for your needs. You have to do this manually, because e-smith does not support samba 3.x by now.

Copy the non-access-based-stuff to the new ibays and map them as local drives in the NT-Login-Script. Just change the NT-Login Script from MAP G:\ \\NT\DRIVE to MAP G:\ \\E-SMITH\IBAY (not shure, if this map command is correct from here).

If you do this by night, the users will not even realize the new server.  

Then: Set up an Ibay for the access-stuff. Copy and test it. Perhaps it will work - perhaps not.

If it works, again: Copy and change map-command.

Last Step would be the most complicated: For migrating the profiles and home-directories you will need better guidance than mine.

But this will do for the first test.

[mbachmann]

I also never managed to integrate an SME into an existing Windows Domain with an NT 4.0 PDC. But: Does the SME Box have an computer account on the windows-machine? Creating a new is easy.

Is creating a new Windows Workgroup for the SME as Workgroup and Domain Controller an option (see server manager, configuration, workgroup?