hello again greg,i assume you will be posting a how-to when development is complete, but if you have time could you please elaborate on the following?
I can certainly put together some documentation and post it up on the wiki or something.
1: i am still unclear if i apply a series of patches? e-smith-samba-1.14.1-serverrole.patch, e-smith-pptpd-1.12.0-serverrole.patch, e-smith-lib-1.18.0-serverrole.path, e-smith-base-4.18.1-serverrole.patch from http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4172 or do i use the smeserver-adv-samba-0.1.0-1.src.rpm from http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4196
The serverrole patches represent an updates of e-smith-samba. These updates fall into three categories:
1. Cleanup up some relic fragments that date back many years (house-cleaning);
2. Improvement to the way SME functions in a windows network with respect to Network Browsing. The changes will definitely improve network browsing speed, especially when a workgroup/domain spans subnets.
3. Replaced the DomainMaster smb dbase property with ServerRole. The DomainMaster smb property dates back to days in SME dev when all we were worried about was making SME perform as a member of a workgroup or as a Primary Domain Controller.
Server Roles (via the ServerRole Property):
1: Workgroup Server: SME functions as a standalone file server and requires local user accounts for authentication (SME offers this now);
2. Primary Domain Controller: SME functions as a WinNT 4 type authentication server for windows domains -- unified login (SME Offers this now);
3. Domain Member: SME functions as a member to a WinNT 4 type domain. Authentication to shares it hosts is done via another authentication server such as an SME Primary Domain controller or a Windows Domain Controller. Basically, SME configured as a Domain Member makes it act like any Windows Machine that is a member of the Windows Domain. (SME does not offer this functionality now, but the patches I provided and my smeserver-adv-samba package to provide this functionality).
4. Backup Domain Controller: Very similar to a Primary Domain Controller except the BDC will yield authentication authority to the PDC if the PDC is present and able to respond to authentication requests. The patches to the base rpms and my smeserver-adv-samba package provide this functionality with one exception: replication of the user accounts. Like the PDC, the BDC must have copies of all user and machine accounts. Once we get full LDAP support for SME, then we can reliably replicate user and machine accounts and, thus fully implement SME as a BDC. Until then, the only way to replicate these accounts is for the PDC to push the txt dbase files to the BDC, which can be a bit tricky and does not provide a means to replicate changes made on the BDC back tot he PDC. In other words, this server mode is highly experiential and you really need to know what you are doing to use it. I've successfully deployed it, but I had to really keep and eye on it.
5. Active Directory Server: Almost identical to SME as a PDC, except it allows SME to manage active directory queries. This functionality is still very much in the beginning phase of being implemented, but it is possible with Samba 3 to provide these functions. Frankly, I don't use ADS, so I have little incentive to spend a bunch of time working on it. If someone would like to jump in and help, that would be wonderful.
6. Active Directory Member: Almost identical to SME as a Domain Member except it has the ability to query active directory services. Once again: I don't use ADS, so I have little incentive to spend a bunch of time working on it. If someone would like to jump in and help, that would be wonderful.
Preliminary Support simply means that additional configuration is necessary to fully deploy these server modes. It is not possible to completely separate all configuration to support these functions for inclusion in another package (e.g., smeserver-adv-samba) as many of the configuration parameters are integral to Samba.
I hope this helps
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