[CentOS] Setting up Samba as fileserver for existing Windows domain

Wed Feb 4 16:21:33 UTC 2015
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 10:05 AM, Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net> wrote:
> This is probably covered in many places, but my Google-fu is failing.
>
> I have an existing office of Windows computers, in a domain, with a
> couple of Windows Server 2012 AD servers.  I need to add a file server,
> so I'd prefer to use CentOS 7 and Samba to do it (because I know very
> little about Windows).  However, I'm not finding a good how-to on that.
> When I search for "samba active directory" or "samba domain", the
> results are mostly about setting up Samba to be the domain controller,
> or join an AD domain as a controller, which I don't really want to do if
> I don't have to.
>
> Anybody have any tips, pointers, etc.?

If you expect existing domain credentials to work, I think you have to
join the domain.  Depending on the nature of the files being served, I
sometimes find it useful to have a public read-only share and avoid
the authentication mess entirely - copying the files in place with
linux tools or winscp.   It is possible to maintain local accounts on
the linux side and add those to samba (an extra step) but it is
painful to keep passwords in sync.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com