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Historically domain controllers (DCs) were Windows servers responding to security authentication requests (logging in, etc.) within the Windows Server domain. Today Samba project goes beyond emulating Windows shares and can be used as Primary Domain Controller in Windows network.
To help people who are under installing/configuring Samba as a DC in their network I published here several links which helped me with this task. First of all, be ready for long time configuring as compared with Windows Active Directory configuration it takes much more time to do the same task with Samba… But practically vendor independent solutions usually worth time spent on compiling, installing, configuration and maintenance.
Why Debian/Ubuntu? Looking through Google’s findings regarding DC set up on these distributions, I noticed some kind of lack of the quality resources lying at the top.
1. The first place one should visit in order to start with above mentioned task is Samba official documentation. Probably not everything that is covered by it would be used, but this is the only place you can find some special aspects of installation and configuration their software.
2. Ricky Jone’s article on howtoforge.com is an excellent guide on how to get the task done on Ubuntu 7.10.
3. Excellent article “SAMBA (Domaincontroller) Server For Small Workgroups With Ubuntu 6.10” written by Till Brehm is applicable also for later Ubuntu versions.
4. Steve Lacey wrote interesting and informative article about Samba on Debian as primary DC on his blog.
5. A certain mawi wrote very informative manual:
Nice touch…
Lot of smb (small medium business) are considering to move to linux and this is huge step for them.
Thanks for sharing…
Thanks for commenting, confiq!
does anyone tried pulling down users/groups in active directory and import it to samba/ldap server? my objective is to remove our windows 2003 AD server and user samba+ldap authentications. any advice?
You can also just download ebox it has a domain controller pre-configured, mail server, proxy, and much more. Its ubuntu 8.04 server with a GUIit’e awsome!!!! I am running a mixed environment ebox (x2), zeroshell, MS small business server 2003, ubuntu 8.04 + VHCS2.47 for a nice webhostng and email platform (use only for yourself not good if you are selling webhosting to insecure for that.) minimum expence for great set up. Only using MS 2003 because P.O.S. program only runs on windows.(tried wine no go)!!
If you already own MS server 2003 why get rid of it AD works better and sounds like you already have it configured?? Like me old pappy used to say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Are you just looking to spend your bosses money?