[CentOS] Re: SMB server with CentOS 4

Wed Dec 7 19:49:23 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <thebs413 at earthlink.net>

Josh Kelley <joshkel at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think that that Samba can serve as a PDC to NT 4.0
> BDCs (or vice versa); the HOWTO says it's impossible, and
the
> 2.2 release notes make no mention of it.

Then it must be 3.0 that Samba can fully replicate to/from
PDC and BDCs.  2.2 (and 2.0 IIRC?) offered the functionality
of a PDC or BDC, but only with Samba itself.

> This is incorrect.  Samba 3.0 cannot be a native ADS DC;
> that feature will be added in Samba 4.

Note I said "replace."  I carefully chose that word.  I
_clarified_ what I meant in another e-mail.

> Another advantage of ADS/change in ADS relative to NT 4.0
> is that it uses DNS rather than NetBIOS name resolution and
> lets you get rid of NetBIOS completely if you wish.

Frankly, I wish they'd move the name services _outside_ of
Samba, and to a general layer-2/3 server.

> Can't you do the same thing using raw printing, by
> configuring the printer in Windows?

You'd have to manually maintain the printer drivers, manually
setup the PPD (or copy it from an existing), etc...  Although
this is tolerable with the Adobe Postscript driver, it's
still easier to manage it with the Samba-CUPS because
everything happens automagically.

One major issue with not using a single printer driver in
Windows is that vendor printer drivers of the same type
(e.g., more than 1 PCL, more than 1 Postscript, etc...) can
conflict**.  That's why at least using the Adobe Postscript
driver solves that (using the vendor's PPD), at least when
you have Postscript drivers (or so emulated at the print
server).

Again, Samba-CUPS setup totally removes this issue because
_everything_ goes through the CUPS driver.  And everything is
automated at the server, including the printer config.

-- Bryan

**NOTE:  I will leave several, "major" office/printer
integrator "unnamed," but they regularly come in and just run
the vendor's install programs and have drastically "dorked
up" the spoolers on my NT/2K/XP systems in the past.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     |  (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ |   missing headers)