On Mon, 2006-10-23 at 19:28 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote: > Unfortunately, all that was done a long time ago, and I'm still seeing those > messages. It's more of an annoyance than a ready problem, though. > > I can find plenty of documentation about using samba with windows domain > controllers, but it seems to be assumed that you will be using one if you go > any further than a couple of computers talking to each other. Well, that's not exactly accurate, though that is what most MCSE's would like you to believe. You can in fact have a network of 100 computers all running Windows without the need for a domain. The most common reason for having a domain (as MCSE's will tell you) is security -- if a laptop connects to a network but does not have domain membership, it cannot use the shared resources, such as shared folders, printers, etc. There are other "benefits" such as having a configuration "follow you" when you login to other computers on the domain, the ability to "find" computers and services using their NetBIOS names, etc. Samba can operate with or without Winbind and domain controllers. In fact, most articles I came across years ago described only connecting to networks without domains. The more recent articles I have seen actually dumbed down the process a lot, and as you noticed, did not give much information about troubleshooting. Also, there seems to be a lot of knowledge about Windows networking metaphors that are just assumed. In my experience, getting a Linux system to join a domain is a special kind of hell -- like being asked to come to the front of the class to explain a concept that everyone else (except you) understands (but you find out later that they don't). But getting a Windows system to join a domain can sometimes be equally frustrating. There are serious issues that no one talks about when a domain scales upwards to include hundreds or computers, or needs to span long geographical distances, or degradations in file transfer speeds. As for your specific problem, it looks like, for some strange reason, Samba wants to contact a PDC(!). It could be a configuration issue or it could be a bug in the package. I would try my best to ignore it if it does not affect operations. I know it's hard when you are so used to the rationality that is UNIX/Linux. -- Pascal Chong email: chongym@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx web: http://cymulacrum.net pgp: http://cymulacrum.net/pgp/cymulacrum.asc "La science ne connaît pas de frontière parce que la connaissance appartient à l’humanité. et que c’est la flamme qui illumine le monde." -- Louis Pasteur
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