problems with samba as a PDC server

[Roger Grosswiler]

> Hi
>
> I am trying to configure a samba to be a PDC server on a small home
> network. Never did it, completely newbie in this area.
> Well, I read some documentation about how to do this but it's not
> working. From a winXP machine I can access the shares on the server.
> WinXP prompts for the user and password and connects correctly. When
> trying to configure XP as part of the domain I get an error: "The user
> name could not be found". When I try to log in with a nonexisting user I
> get a different message. When trying to connect with a normal user (not
> set as admin on smb.conf) I get a "Access is denied" message. So it
> seems like the users are been correctly identified by the server. I'm
> using fedora core 1 with samba 3.0.2rc1 (upgraded in hope that would
> work with the latest version)
[snip]
hi Gustavo,
I run this configuraton (with XP Pro) succesfully on my homenetwork. I had
the same effect, but its working fine now. So, what i did:

1) adding the root-password to the /etc/samba/smbpasswd:
smbpasswd -a root
after that, he asks for a password (2 times) just enter it.

2) if you use smbpasswd as your backend, don't forget to create your users
and machines in smbpasswd:
smbpasswd -a username (same as if you create root)
smbpasswd -a -w machinename$ (the $sign is important, this indicates a
machine)
beware: those users just can be created, if they exist also as
linux-users. you can cadd dem manually like this (as root)
useradd -s /sbin/nologin -d /dev/null username (for this user no home, no
shell)

3) you need to tell your machines, that they are part of this domain. You
do this in Win XP, if you go to your workspace and do add to domain (or
whatever, i have a german win) use here the user root and the password you
indicated on doing smbpasswd on point 1

4) perhaps not important for you. if you have linux-clients, you should
run winbind. so you can do on the shell of the server and of the clients a
net join -rpc (if you use rpc) -S servername -U root

this worked for me, i have a mixed infrastructure win/linux on samba 3.0.

HTH
Roger