Samba PDC/BDC

[Ben Scott]

On 1/17/06, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
> You're lacking some ingenuity here.  Every Samba server is the PDC for
> it's local physical network, and a BDC for the remote network.

  Ummm... I'm pretty sure that's completely wrong.  An NTLM server can
only be one thing; either a member, a PDC, or a BDC.  If you want a
BDC, you need to run another instance of Samba.  Can you site a
reference please?

> (This is part of Windows I don't
> know too much about.  However, I have read that roaming profiles is
> usually a bad idea.)

  I disagree strongly, and so do a great many other doze admins. 
Roaming profiles go a long way towards making Windows system
administration tollerable.

> My (albeit limited) understanding of roaming
> profiles is that they're stored on the DC, no?

  The information on where to *locate* the roaming profile is stored
as part of the user account, on the DCs.  The actual profile can be on
any server you like.

> If so, then wouldn't make it rather irrellevent whether you have one
> or two domains, since the profile is probably best served from a
> local system?

  You can (and should) do this, regardless of how many NTLM domains you have.

>  If this is the case, then it would actually seem that 2 domains
> would be easier  to deal with, since the only time a user experienced
> a slow log in time would be when at the other location and needing to
> download their profile (perhaps this is why I've read roaming profiles
> are bad?)

  Windoze will generally detect when the "master copy" (my term) of
the profile is on the other side of a slow link, and used the cached
profile (local copy) instead.  (Or create a temporary profile, if no
cached profile is available.)

> As an aside, this sounds amazingly like having an NFS-based home
> directory and trying to NFS mount it across a T1 from 3000 miles away!

  Pretty close.  The major difference is that Windows has all user
operaration occur on a local copy of the profile, and syncronizes the
local copy to the "master copy" at logon and logoff.  So you have most
of the same trouble, just at different times.

> Let me tell you, udp-based NFS over a T1 is *really* slow! :)

  I'm willing to bet SMB is worse.  :-)

-- Ben