Mary,

You have some decisions to make.

Do you want to make and maintain unix user 
accounts for everyone that needs access to 
this samba file server? Or, do you want to use 
bleeding edge code (Winbind) in the newest 
version of Samba (2.2.x) to handle unix 
account management for you?

If you don't mind the tried and true "manage 
unix user acounts" approach, you need to 
decide if you want encrypted passwords or 
unencrypted passwords for access to the 
Samba box. Encryption requires you to 
maintain two password files (one unix and 
one for Samba), but you probably don't care 
about the unix account side if you are using 
it for Win* storage. Unencrypted access 
allows you to use one file for passwords 
(the unix one: /etc/passwd), but will require 
a small registry modification for Win98, 
WinNT4SP3+, WinME, Win2K, and WinXP 
(*.reg files are in the Samba docs).

You can easily redirect all authentication 
for the Samba server to an existing PDC 
on your network, but without Windbind 
you will still have to create a unix user on 
the Samba box for a Win* domain user to 
access resources there (usually).

I don't know what prepacked versions of 
Samba come with the distribution/version 
of Linux you are installing, but you should 
be able to use an RPM version easily, and 
it does compile and install pretty easy too.

Good luck, and if you have more questions, 
TCLUG is probably a good place to ask 
them.

Troy

>>> Mary at DesignerDoors.com 11/27/01 11:07AM >>>
I am going to be installing the latest Mandrake Linux package (8.1 I
believe), We are going to be using it for a file storage server and are
going to be using Samba to help communicate between this and our existing NT
4.0 network.  Are there any issues I should be on the look-out for?  Thanks.