Re: How to move a samba PDC to a diffrent box

Scott Lovenberg <scott.lovenberg@xxxxxxxxx> · Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:46:08 -0400

Robert wrote:

On Wednesday 18 June 2008, John Drescher wrote:

We have a domain with more than 100 users and we need to replace our PDC.
The PDC main function is to authenticate our users to connect to the
shared drive and to authenticate computer login.  The PDC is running
samba with openldap on Gentoo machine.  I have two BDCs with ACL set to
read and write only.  It was set that way to make the syncing process
easier.  The syncing process is like a chain using slurpd.  We plan to
use "syncrepl" later.

What is the best way to do to replace the PDC?  I already have a Gentoo
machine up and running.  I copied over all the samba and openldap files
from the old PDC to this new machine.  I also exported the database by
running the "slapcat -l" command.  I am hesitant to start the slapd,
slurpd and samba service as I am not so sure if I am doing the right
thing.

Disconnect the network cable on the new machine to make sure you are
not interfering with the rest of the network.
Start slapd then use slapadd to add your ldap to the database. Use
slapcat to verify that all was added and the ldif looks correct. Then
start samba and see if the smbclient can connect to itself.

Is the old machine the same name as the new? How about the ipddress?
Are you using wins, lmhosts or dns for your clinets to find the pdc?

BTW, I have to cut this a lot shorter than I want but I am very busy
at the day job and if I do not get my tasks done several new users
will not have a pc on Monday.

John

I'll add my two cents. I recently did this, except we aren't using ldap. 

Didn't see the advantage. It was a new box with a different IP address. Long 

story short: All but 2 XP SP2 refused to join the new domain. Told me Logon 

failure: unknown user name or bad password. The Win2K and XP SP1 machines did 

not have a problem, and the log files show root authenticated successfully, 

so it looks like XP SP2 is the problem, but I have no idea why 2 joined when 

all the rest didn't.

Still haven't found the reason or fix and most machines are workgroup members 

now...Good luck, hopefully you won't need it.

Something to this effect happened to me once about two years ago.  I 

think the punch line was that I broke the SID when I changed the IP or 

hostname, IIRC.  All XP Pro SP2 clients.  I think I ended up blowing 

away the machine accounts and rejoining the clients to the domain (I 

only had about a dozen, so it was just me kicking myself as I recalled 

the thought, "this might not be wise" echoing through my minds' ear as I 

rebooted the server after changing the configuration, instead of having 

to join hundreds of clients back again).  Have you verified that this 

hasn't happened to you?

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