PDC

Making Amahi a PDC - Primary Domain Controller

WARNING: This feature is under active development

• To join a machine, it has to be done by logging in once as root. unfortuantely, amahi does not create a root samba user. for now and until we grant admin rights to other users, do this:

      smbpasswd -a root
      (set the samba password for the root user)
      smbpasswd -e root

• We need to fix that somehow

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Old Directions

Open a terminal on your hda, or, if you use putty, open a connection to your hda.
Login as root: su -
First, backup your smb.conf file, in case you run into problems you can easily revert back.

• cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb_old.conf

next we need to modify the smb file, i use nano for this, you may use any editor you feel confortable with

• nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

change the apropriate parts in the smb.conf.
Save your smb.conf

So at this point we need to create the corresponding directories:

• mkdir /var/hda/domain-settings
• mkdir /var/hda/domain-settings/netlogon
• mkdir /var/hda/domain-settings/profiles

Each time you want a user to join the domain, a user needs to be added, this can be done through the users tab on the amahi dashboard.
aditionally, a profile directory needs to be created.

• mkdir /var/hda/domain-settings/profiles/JanJacobs

JanJacobs is the user i created through the users tab of the amahi dashboard.
Since we are logging in as root, we need to change the ownership of the previously created directory to the corresponding owner:

• chown -R JanJacobs /var/hda/domain-settings/profiles/JanJacobs

Now, this still doesnt allow us to login, because in samba, machines need to be added too!
this can be done automaticly, but for the time beeing we do it manually, amahi may facilitate this for you in the future.

• useradd -s /bin/false -d /dev/null computername$
• smbpasswd -a -m computername

Now as you can see there are some differences, when we added the Windows pc to Linux, we added the name computername$, this tells Linux that it is a machine, not a name.
Next when we added the Samba password, we invoked the -m, this again tells Samba that we are adding a pc, not a person.
Also, you probably noticed that it did not prompt for a password, it just added computername$.
When you logon to the domain, Samba will read the password from your Windows password.
Now that this done, all what is left to do is restart Samba, this also has to be done for each computer you intend to login with.
no we dont add the $ sign, since all we do is adding an existing linux user to the samba password file.
we tell samba its a machine simply by adding the -m switch to the command.
At this point i have network logins working, using roaming profiles.

now its time to restart samba.

• /etc/init.d/smb restart

Now you need to setup your Windows pc for domain logins.
(Note the first time that you join a Samba domain from Windows, you will need to join the domain by using root as the name, and your root password for the password.
After rebooting, any valid user will be able to access the domain.)