nsswitch/winbindd question

Chong Yu Meng chongym at cymulacrum.net
Tue Oct 24 05:21:56 UTC 2006


On Mon, 2006-10-23 at 19:28 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:

> Unfortunately, all that was done a long time ago, and I'm still seeing those 
> messages.  It's more of an annoyance than a ready problem, though.
> 
> I can find plenty of documentation about using samba with windows domain 
> controllers, but it seems to be assumed that you will be using one if you go 
> any further than a couple of computers talking to each other.  

Well, that's not exactly accurate, though that is what most MCSE's would
like you to believe. You can in fact have a network of 100 computers all
running Windows without the need for a domain. The most common reason
for having a domain (as MCSE's will tell you) is security -- if a laptop
connects to a network but does not have domain membership, it cannot use
the shared resources, such as shared folders, printers, etc. There are
other "benefits" such as having a configuration "follow you" when you
login to other computers on the domain, the ability to "find" computers
and services using their NetBIOS names, etc. 

Samba can operate with or without Winbind and domain controllers. In
fact, most articles I came across years ago described only connecting to
networks without domains. The more recent articles I have seen actually
dumbed down the process a lot, and as you noticed, did not give much
information about troubleshooting. Also, there seems to be a lot of
knowledge about Windows networking metaphors that are just assumed. 

In my experience, getting a Linux system to join a domain is a special
kind of hell -- like being asked to come to the front of the class to
explain a concept that everyone else (except you) understands (but you
find out later that they don't). But getting a Windows system to join a
domain can sometimes be equally frustrating. There are serious issues
that no one talks about when a domain scales upwards to include hundreds
or computers, or needs to span long geographical distances, or
degradations in file transfer speeds.
  
As for your specific problem, it looks like, for some strange reason,
Samba wants to contact a PDC(!). It could be a configuration issue or it
could be a bug in the package. I would try my best to ignore it if it
does not affect operations. I know it's hard when you are so used to the
rationality that is UNIX/Linux.


-- 
Pascal Chong 
email:  chongym at cymulacrum.net 
web:    http://cymulacrum.net
pgp:    http://cymulacrum.net/pgp/cymulacrum.asc

"La science ne connaît pas de frontière parce que la connaissance
appartient à l’humanité. et que c’est la flamme qui illumine le monde."

-- Louis Pasteur
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