I am setting up a home network, Using Samba 3.2.4 running on FC9 as my primary domain controller (PDC). I have 2 windows desktops and a windows laptop, all running Win2k. I also have a Mac.
What I am trying to do: 1) allow my family to log on to a windows machine or the mac using the same name and password 2) have their home folder prominently displayed as the default place to put files (so that I can do easy backups) 3) default to a backup local login if the Samba PDC is off line - preferably in a way that allows new files to be sent easily to the home directory when the PDC is back on line 4) allow me to use the SAME local profile on the windows machine that I normally use for local logins
So far, this is what I'm able to make happen: 1) unified login accomplished using Samba machine as primary domain controller (PDC) 2) home folder displayed as just another drive or folder on the desktop - user responsibility to put important stuff here - I can live with this 3) would be good enough if usual login is denied when the PDC is down - not sure what happens here 4) this is my biggest challenge
re #4 I have a dual head windows box with things set up the way I want. My profile was over 3GB - I have cut that to half, but it's still way to big to consider a roaming profile; and when I log in using this machine, I want all of the features specific to it to be available.
I can switch off roaming profiles by setting logon path = <NULL, blank entry> on the Samba config file, but then windows sets up a NEW, different local profile for domain logins. I can't find out, wading through google searches, how to make it use the SAME local profile that I use to log in to the machine - I don't even know if it's possible.
I tried replacing the folders in the new login profile (for the domain login) with "shortcuts" to the folders in the old profile, but the OS simply adds folders with the same names and ignores the links. I have copied some critical folders, but I do not have enough room on my partition to copy everything (I could live with my bookmarks being out of sync between the two folders, but I want most things to be the same).
Any solutions?
One I can think of right now is to scrap the PDC and use workgroups, with shortcuts to the home folder displayed on the desktops of local profiles (and forget about unified logins). Any advantage to using a windows machine as the PDC and making the linux box and Mac domain members?