Table of Contents
Novell is a company any seasoned IT manager has to admire. Since the acquisition of the SuSE Linux company, the acquisition on Ximian, and other moves that are friendly to the FLOSS (Free-Libre/Open Source Software) movement, Novell are emerging out of a deep regression that almost saw the company disappear into obscurity. The now Linux friendly Novell's SUSE Linux is being used as a host to which NetWare servers are being migrated. It is in many ways ironic that Novell are today hosting NetWare on top of Linux. At the same time older NetWare servers are still being migrated to Samba servers. It will be interesting to see what will become of NetWare over time.
Whatever flavor of Linux is preferred in your environment, whether Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, SUSE (Novell) the information in this chapter should be read with appropriate cognizance that file locations may vary a little; even so the information in this chapter should provide something of value.
This chapter was contributed by Misty Stanley-Jones, a UNIX administrator of many years who surfaced on the Samba mailing list with a barrage of questions, and who regularly now helps other administrators to solve thorny Samba migration questions.
One wonders how many NetWare servers remain in active service. Many are being migrated to Samba on Linux. Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux 9.x and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 are ideal target platforms to which a NetWare server may be migrated. The migration method of choice is much dependant on the tools that the administrator finds most natural to use. The old-hand NetWare guru will likely want to use the tools like the NetWare NLM for rsync to migrate files from the NetWare server to the Samba server. The UNIX administrator might prefer tools that are part of the Mars_NWE (Martin Stovers' NetWare Emulator) open source package. The MS Windows network administrator will likely make use of the NWConv utility that is a part of Windows NT4 Server. Whatever your tool of choice, migration will be filled with joyous and challenging moments - though probably not concurrently.
This chapter tells its own story, so ride along, ... maybe the information here presented will help to smooth over a similar migration challenge in your favorite networking environment.
Misty Stanley-Jones was recruited by Abmas Inc. to administer a network that had not received much attention for some years and was much in need of a make-over. As a brand-new sysadmin to this company, she inherited a very old Novell file server, and came with a determination to change things for the better.
A site survey turned up the following details for the old NetWare server:
200 MHz MMX processor |
512K RAM |
24 GB disk space in RAID1 |
Novell 4.11 patched to service pack 7 |
60+ users |
7 network-attached printers |
The company had outgrown this server several years ago and were dealing with severe growing pains. Some of the problems experienced were:
Very slow performance
Available storage hovering around the 5% range.
Extremely slow print spooling.
Users storing information on their local hard drives, causing backup integrity problems.
At one point disk space had filled up to 100% causing the payroll database to become corrupt. This caused the accounting department to be down for over a week and necessitated deployment of another file server. The replacement server was created with very poor security and design considerations from a discarded desktop PC.
Misty has provided this summary of her migration experience in the hope that it will help someone to avoid the challenges she faced. Perhaps her configuration files and background will accelerate your learning as you grapple with a similar migration challenge.
After presenting a cost-benefit report to management, as well as an estimated time-to-completion, approval was given proceed with the solution proposed. The server was built from purchased components. The total project cost was $3000. A brief description of the configuration follows:
|
3.0 GHz P4 Processor |
|
1 GB RAM |
|
120 GB SATA operating system drive |
|
4 x 80 GB SATA data drives (RAID5 240 GB capacity) |
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2 x 80 GB SATA removable drives for online backup |
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A DLT drive for asynchronous offline backup |
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SUSE Linux Professional 9.2 |
The new system has operated for six months without problems. Over the past months much attention has been focused on cleaning up desktops and user profiles.
A decision to use LDAP was made even though I know nothing about LDAP except that I had been reading the book “LDAP System Administration”, by Gerald Carter. LDAP seemed to provide some of the functionality of Novell's e-Directory Services and would provide centralized authentication and identity management.
Building the LDAP database took a while, and a lot of trial and error. Following the guidance I obtained from Jerry Carter's book “LDAP System Administration”, I installed OpenLDAP (from RPM; later I compiled a more current version from source) and built my initial LDAP tree.
The first challenge was to create a company white-pages, followed by manually entering everything from the printed company directory. This used only the inetOrgPerson objectclass from the OpenLDAP schemas. The next step was to write a shell script which would look at the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files on our mail server, and create a LDIF file from which the information could be imported into LDAP. This would allow use of LDAP for Linux authentication, IMAP, POP3, and SMTP.
Given that a decision had been made to use Courier-IMAP the schema “courier.schema” from the Courier-IMAP source tarball is ncessary to resolve Courier-specific LDAP directory needs.
The following software must be installed on the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to perform this migration:
openldap2 |
openldap2-client |
openldap2-devel (only for Samba compilation) |
nss_ldap |
smbldap-tools Version 0.8.7 |
perl-ldap |
samba-3.0.12 or later |
samba-client-3.0.12 or later |
samba-winbind-3.0.12 or later |
Each software application must be carefully configured in preparation for migration. The configuration files used at Abmas are provided as a guide and should be modified to meet needs at your site.
The /etc/openldap/slapd.conf file Misty used is shown in ???.
Example 9.1. OpenLDAP Control File slapd.conf Part A
#/usr/local/etc/openldap/slapd.conf
#
# See slapd.conf(5) for details on configuration options.
# This file should NOT be world readable.
#
include /etc/openldap/schema/core.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/cosine.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/inetorgperson.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/nis.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/samba.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/dhcp.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/misc.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/idpool.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/eduperson.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/commURI.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/local.schema
include /etc/openldap/schema/authldap.schema
pidfile /var/run/slapd/run/slapd.pid
argsfile /var/run/slapd/run/slapd.args
replogfile /data/ldap/log/slapd.replog
# Load dynamic backend modules:
modulepath /usr/lib/openldap/modules
#######################################################################
# Logging parameters
#######################################################################
loglevel 256
#######################################################################
# SASL and TLS options
#######################################################################
sasl-host ldap.corp.abmas.org
sasl-realm DIGEST-MD5
sasl-secprops none
TLSCipherSuite HIGH:MEDIUM:+SSLV2
TLSCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/private/abmas-cert.pem
TLSCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/certs/private/abmas-key.pem
password-hash {SSHA}
defaultsearchbase "dc=abmas,dc=biz"
Example 9.2. OpenLDAP Control File slapd.conf Part B
#######################################################################
# bdb database definitions
#######################################################################
database bdb
suffix "dc=abmas,dc=biz"
rootdn "cn=manager,dc=abmas,dc=biz"
rootpw {SSHA}gdo/dUvoT4ZJmULz3rUt6A3H/hBEduJ5
directory /data/ldap
mode 0600
# The following is for BDB to make it flush its data to disk every
# 500 seconds or 5kb of data
checkpoint 500 5
## For running slapindex
#readonly on
## Indexes for often-requested attributes
index objectClass eq
index cn eq,sub
index sn eq,sub
index uid eq,sub
index uidNumber eq
index gidNumber eq
index sambaSID eq
index sambaPrimaryGroupSID eq
index sambaDomainName eq
index default sub
cachesize 2000
replica host=baa.corp.abmas.org:389
suffix="dc=abmas,dc=biz"
binddn="cn=replica,dc=abmas,dc=biz"
credentials=verysecret
bindmethod=simple
tls=yes
replica host=ns.abmas.org:389
suffix="dc=abmas,dc=biz"
binddn="cn=replica,dc=abmas,dc=biz"
credentials=verysecret
bindmethod=simple
tls=yes
Example 9.3. OpenLDAP Control File slapd.conf Part C
####################################################################### # ACL section ####################################################################### ## MOST RESTRICTIVE RULES MUST GO FIRST! ## Users can change their own passwords. ## Nobody else can read the password access to attrs=userPassword by group/groupOfUniqueNames/uniqueMember="cn=LDAP Administrators, \ dc=abmas,dc=biz" write by self write by * auth ## Home contact info restricted to the logged-in user access to attrs=hometelephoneNumber,homePostalAddress,\ mobileTelephoneNumber,pagerTelephoneNumber by group/groupOfUniqueNames/uniqueMember="cn=LDAP Administrators,\ dc=abmas,dc=biz" write by self write by * none ## Only admins can manage email aliases access to dn.sub="ou=Email Aliases,dc=abmas,dc=biz" filter=(roleOccupant=*) attrs=maildrop by dnattr=roleOccupant write by * read ## Allow delegated management of certain aliases which are ## for mailman-style mailing lists. access to dn.sub="ou=Email Aliases,dc=abmas,dc=biz" by group/groupOfUniqueNames/uniqueMember="cn=LDAP Administrators,\ dc=abmas,dc=biz" write by * read ## Default to read-only access access to * by dn.base="cn=replica,ou=people,ou=corp,dc=abmas,dc=biz" write by group/groupOfUniqueNames/uniqueMember="cn=LDAP Administrators,\ dc=abmas,dc=biz" write by * read access to attrs=namingcontexts by anonymous read
The /etc/ldap.conf file used is listed in ???.
Example 9.4. NSS LDAP Control File /etc/ldap.conf
# /etc/ldap.conf # This file is present on every *NIX client that authenticates to LDAP. # For me, most of the defaults are fine. There is an amazing amount of # customization that can be done see the man page for info. # Your LDAP server. Must be resolvable without using LDAP. The following # is for the LDAP server all others use the FQDN of the server URI ldap://127.0.0.1 # The distinguished name of the search base. base ou=corp,dc=abmas,dc=biz # The LDAP version to use (defaults to 3 if supported by client library) ldap_version 3 # The distinguished name to bind to the server with if the effective # user ID is root. Password is stored in /etc/ldap.secret (mode 600) rootbinddn cn=Manager,dc=abmas,dc=biz # Filter to AND with uid=%s pam_filter objectclass=posixAccoun # The user ID attribute (defaults to uid) pam_login_attribute uid # Group member attribute pam_member_attribute memberUID # Use the OpenLDAP password change # extended operation to update the password. pam_password exop # OpenLDAP SSL mechanism # start_tls mechanism uses the normal LDAP port, LDAPS typically 636 ssl start_tls tls_cacertfile /etc/ssl/certs/private/abmas-cert.pem ...
The Name Server Switch control file /etc/nsswitch.conf has the following contents:
# /etc/nsswitch.conf # This file controls the resolve order for system databases. # the following two lines obviate the "+" entry in /etc/passwd and /etc/group. passwd: files ldap group: files ldap shadow: files ldap # The above are all that I store in LDAP at this point. There are # possibilities to store hosts, services, ethers, and lots of other things.
In my setup, users authenticate via PAM and NSS using LDAP-based accounts. This works out of the box with the configuration files in this chapter. It enables you to have no local accounts for users (it is highly advisable to have a local account for the root user). Traps for the unwary include:
If your LDAP database goes down, nobody can authenticate except for root.
If fail-over is configured incorrectly weird behavior can occur. For example, DNS failing to resolve.
I do have two LDAP slave servers configured. That subject is beyond the scope of this document and steps for implementing it are well-documented.
The following services authenticate using LDAP:
UNIX login/ssh |
Postfix (SMTP) |
Courier-IMAP/IMAPS/POP3/POP3S |
Company-wide White-Pages can be searched using a LDAP client such as the one in the Windows Address Book.
Having gained a solid understanding of LDAP, and a relatively workable LDAP tree thus far, it was time to configure Samba. I compiled the latest stable SAMBA and also installed the latest smbldap-tools from Idealx.
The Samba smb.conf file was configured as shown in ???.
Example 9.5. Samba Configuration File smb.conf Part A
Example 9.6. Samba Configuration File smb.conf Part B
Example 9.7. Samba Configuration File smb.conf Part C
Example 9.8. Samba Configuration File smb.conf Part D
Example 9.9. Samba Configuration File smb.conf Part E
Most of these shares are only used by one company group, but they are required because of some ancient Qbasic and Rbase applications were that written expecting their own drive letters.
Note: During the process of building the new server, I kept data files up-to-date with the Novell server via use of rsync. On a separate system (my workstation in fact) which could be rebooted whenever necessary, I set up a mount point to the Novell server via ncpmount. I then created a rsyncd.conf to share that mount point out to my new server, and synchronized once an hour. The script I used to synchronize is quite nice, so I will include it in an appendix. The reason I had to have the rsync daemon running on a system which could be rebooted frequently is because ncpfs has a nasty habit of creating stale mount points which cannot be recovered without a reboot. The reason for hourly synchronization is because some part of the chain was very slow and performance-heavy (whether rsync itself, the network, or the Novell server I am not sure probably the Novell server).
After Samba had been configured, I initialized the LDAP database. So the first thing I had to do was to store the LDAP password in the Samba configuration by issuing the command (as root):
root# smbpasswd -w verysecret
where “verysecret” is replaced by the LDAP bind password.
The Idealx smbldap-tools package can be configured using a script called configure.pl that is provided as part of the tool. See Chapter 6 for an example of its use. Many administrators, like Misty, choose to do this manually so as to maintain greater awareness of how the tool-chain works, and possibly to avoid undesirable actions from occurring un-noticed.
Now Samba is ready for use. Now configure the smbldap-tools. There are two relevant files, which are usually put into the directory /etc/smbldap-tools. The main file, smbldap.conf is shown in ???.
Example 9.10. Idealx smbldap-tools Control File Part A
######### # # located in /etc/smbldap-tools/smbldap.conf # ############################################################################## # # General Configuration # ############################################################################## # Put your own SID # to obtain this number do: net getlocalsid SID="S-1-5-21-725326080-1709766072-2910717368" ############################################################################## # # LDAP Configuration # ############################################################################## # Notes: to use to dual ldap servers backend for Samba, you must patch # Samba with the dual-head patch from IDEALX. If not using this patch # just use the same server for slaveLDAP and masterLDAP. # Those two servers declarations can also be used when you have # . one master LDAP server where all writing operations must be done # . one slave LDAP server where all reading operations must be done # (typically a replication directory) # Ex: slaveLDAP=127.0.0.1 slaveLDAP="127.0.0.1" slavePort="389" # Master LDAP : needed for write operations # Ex: masterLDAP=127.0.0.1 masterLDAP="127.0.0.1" masterPort="389" # Use TLS for LDAP # If set to 1, this option will use start_tls for connection # (you should also used the port 389) ldapTLS="0" # How to verify the server's certificate (none, optional or require) # see "man Net::LDAP" in start_tls section for more details verify=""
Example 9.11. Idealx smbldap-tools Control File Part B
# CA certificate
# see "man Net::LDAP" in start_tls section for more details
cafile=""
certificate to use to connect to the ldap server
# see "man Net::LDAP" in start_tls section for more details
clientcert=""
# key certificate to use to connect to the ldap server
# see "man Net::LDAP" in start_tls section for more details
clientkey=""
# LDAP Suffix
# Ex: suffix=dc=IDEALX,dc=ORG
suffix="ou=MEGANET2,dc=abmas,dc=biz"
# Where are stored Users
# Ex: usersdn="ou=Users,dc=IDEALX,dc=ORG"
usersdn="ou=People,${suffix}"
# Where are stored Computers
# Ex: computersdn="ou=Computers,dc=IDEALX,dc=ORG"
computersdn="ou=People,${suffix}"
# Where are stored Groups
# Ex groupsdn="ou=Groups,dc=IDEALX,dc=ORG"
groupsdn="ou=Groups,${suffix}"
# Where are stored Idmap entries (used if samba is a domain member server)
# Ex groupsdn="ou=Idmap,dc=IDEALX,dc=ORG"
idmapdn="ou=Idmap,${suffix}"
# Where to store next uidNumber and gidNumber available
sambaUnixIdPooldn="sambaDomainName=MEGANET2,dc=abmas,dc=biz"
# Default scope Used
scope="sub"
Example 9.12. Idealx smbldap-tools Control File Part C
# Unix password encryption (CRYPT, MD5, SMD5, SSHA, SHA) hash_encrypt="MD5" # if hash_encrypt is set to CRYPT, you may set a salt format. # default is "%s", but many systems will generate MD5 hashed # passwords if you use "$1$%.8s". This parameter is optional! crypt_salt_format="%s" ############################################################################## # # Unix Accounts Configuration # ############################################################################## # Login defs # Default Login Shell # Ex: userLoginShell="/bin/bash" userLoginShell="/bin/false" # Home directory # Ex: userHome="/home/%U" userHome="/home/%U" # Gecos userGecos="Samba User" # Default User (POSIX and Samba) GID defaultUserGid="513" # Default Computer (Samba) GID defaultComputerGid="515" # Skel dir skeletonDir="/etc/skel" # Default password validation time (time in days) Comment the next line if # you don't want password to be enable for defaultMaxPasswordAge days (be # careful to the sambaPwdMustChange attribute's value) defaultMaxPasswordAge="45"
Example 9.13. Idealx smbldap-tools Control File Part D
############################################################################## # # SAMBA Configuration # ############################################################################## # The UNC path to home drives location (%U username substitution) # Ex: \\My-PDC-netbios-name\homes\%U # Just set it to a null string if you want to use the smb.conf 'logon home' # directive and/or disable roaming profiles userSmbHome="" # The UNC path to profiles locations (%U username substitution) # Ex: \\My-PDC-netbios-name\profiles\%U # Just set it to a null string if you want to use the smb.conf 'logon path' # directive and/or disable roaming profiles userProfile="" # The default Home Drive Letter mapping # (will be automatically mapped at logon time if home directory exist) # Ex: H: for H: userHomeDrive="" # The default user netlogon script name (%U username substitution) # if not used, will be automatically username.cmd # make sure script file is edited under dos # Ex: %U.cmd # userScript="startup.cmd" # make sure script file is edited under dos userScript="" # Domain appended to the users "mail"-attribute # when smbldap-useradd -M is used mailDomain="abmas.org" ############################################################################## # # SMBLDAP-TOOLS Configuration (default are ok for a RedHat) # ############################################################################## # Allows not to use smbpasswd (if with_smbpasswd == 0 in smbldap_conf.pm) but # prefer Crypt::SmbHash library with_smbpasswd="0" smbpasswd="/usr/bin/smbpasswd"
NOTE: I chose not to take advantage of the TLS capability of this. Eventually I may go back and tweak it. Also I chose not to take advantage of the master/slave configuration as I heard horror stories that it was unstable. My slave servers are replicas only.
The /etc/smbldap-tools/smbldap_bind.conf file is shown here:
# smbldap_bind.conf # # This file simply tells smbldap-tools how to bind to your LDAP server. # It has to be a DN with full write access to the Samba portion of # the database. ############################ # Credential Configuration # ############################ # Notes: you can specify two differents configuration if you use a # master ldap for writing access and a slave ldap server for reading access # By default, we will use the same DN (so it will work for standard Samba # release) slaveDN="cn=Manager,dc=abmas,dc=biz" slavePw="verysecret" masterDN="cn=Manager,dc=abmas,dc=biz" masterPw="verysecret"
We can now run the smbldap-populate command which will populate the LDAP tree with the appropriate default users, groups, and UID and GID pools. It will create a user called Administrator with UID=0 and GID=0 matching the Domain Admins group. This is fine you can still log in a root to a Windows system, but it will break cached credentials if you need to log in as the administrator to a system that is not on the network for whatever reason.
After the LDAP database has been pre-loaded it is prudent to validate that the information needed is in the LDAP directory. This can be done done by restarting the LDAP server, then performing an LDAP search by executing:
root# ldapsearch -W -x -b "dc=abmas,dc=biz"\ -D "cn=Manager,dc=abmas,dc=biz" \ "(Objectclass=*)" Enter LDAP Password: # extended LDIF # # LDAPv3 # base <dc=abmas,dc=biz> with scope sub # filter: (ObjectClass=*) # requesting: ALL # # abmas.biz dn: dc=abmas,dc=biz objectClass: dcObject objectClass: organization o: abmas dc: abmas # People, abmas.biz dn: ou=People,dc=abmas,dc=biz objectClass: organizationalUnit ou: People # Groups, abmas.biz dn: ou=Groups,dc=abmas,dc=biz objectClass: organizationalUnit ou: Groups # Idmap, abmas.biz dn: ou=Idmap,dc=abmas,dc=biz objectClass: organizationalUnit ou: Idmap ...
With the LDAP directory now intialized it is time to create the Windows and POSIX (UNIX) group accounts as well as the mappings from Windows groups to UNIX groups. The easiest way to do this is to use smbldap-groupadd command. It will create the group with the posixGroup and sambaGroupMapping attributes, a unique GID, and an automatically-determined RID. I learned the hard way not to try to do this by hand.
After I had my group mappings in place, I added users to the groups (the users don't really have to exist yet). I used the smbldap-groupmod command to accomplish this. It can also be done manually by adding memberUID attributes to the group entries in LDAP.
The most monumental task of all was adding the sambaSamAccount information to each already-existent posixAccount entry. I did it one at a time as I moved people onto the new server, by issuing the command:
root# smbldap-usermod -a -P username
I completed that step for every user after asking the person what their current NetWare password was. The wiser way to have done it would probably be to dump the entire database to an LDIF file. This can be done by executing:
root# slapcat > somefile.ldif
Then update the LDIF file created by using a Perl script to parse and add the appropriate attributes and objectClasses to each entry, followed by re-importing the entire database into the LDAP directory.
Rebuilding of the LDAP directory can be done as follows:
root# rcldap stop root# cd /data/ldap root# rm *bdb _* log* root# su - ldap -c "slapadd -l somefile.ldif" root# rcldap start
This can be done at any time and for any reason, with no harm to the database.
So first I added a test user, of course. The LDIF for this test user looks like this, to give you an idea:
# Entry 1: cn=Test User,ou=people,ou=corp,dc=abmas,dc=biz
dn:cn=Test User,ou=people,ou=corp,dc=abmas,dc=biz
cn: Test User
gecos: Test User
gidNumber: 513
givenName: Test
homeDirectory: /home/test.user
homePhone: 555
l: Somewhere
l: ST
mail: test.user
o: Corp
objectClass: top
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
objectClass: posixAccount
objectClass: sambaSamAccount
postalCode: 12345
sn: User
street: 10 Some St.
uid: test.user
uidNumber: 1074
sambaLogonTime: 0
sambaLogoffTime: 2147483647
sambaKickoffTime: 2147483647
sambaPwdCanChange: 0
displayName: Samba User
sambaSID: S-1-5-21-725326080-1709766072-2910717368-3148
sambaLMPassword: 9D29C287C58448F9AAD3B435B51404EE
sambaAcctFlags: [U]
sambaNTPassword: D062088E99C95E37D7702287BB35E770
sambaPwdLastSet: 1102537694
sambaPwdMustChange: 1106425694
userPassword: {SSHA}UzFZ2VxRGdwUueLnTGtsTBtnsvMO1oj8
loginShell: /bin/false
Then I went over to a spare Windows NT machine and joined it to the MEGANET2 domain. It worked, and the machine's account entry under ou=Computers looks like this:
dn:uid=w2kengrspare$,ou=Computers,ou=MEGANET2,dc=abmas,dc=biz objectClass: top objectClass: inetOrgPerson objectClass: posixAccount objectClass: sambaSamAccount cn: w2kengrspare$ sn: w2kengrspare$ uid: w2kengrspare$ uidNumber: 1104 gidNumber: 515 homeDirectory: /dev/null loginShell: /bin/false description: Computer gecos: Computer sambaSID: S-1-5-21-725326080-1709766072-2910717368-3208 sambaPrimaryGroupSID: S-1-5-21-725326080-1709766072-2910717368-2031 displayName: W2KENGRSPARE$ sambaPwdCanChange: 1103149236 sambaPwdMustChange: 2147483647 sambaNTPassword: CA199C45CB6737035DB6D9D9F6CD1834 sambaPwdLastSet: 1103149236 sambaAcctFlags: [W ]
So now I can log in with a test user from the machine w2kengrspare. It's all fine and good, but that user is in no groups yet so has pretty boring access. We can fix that by writing the login script! To write the login script, I used Kixstart. I used it because it will work with every architecture of Windows, has an active and helpful user base, and was both easier to learn and more powerful than the standard netlogon scripts I have seen. I also did not have to do a logon script per user or per group.
I downloaded Kixtart and put the following files in my [netlogon] share:
KIX32.EXE
KX32.dll
KX95.dll <-- Not needed unless you are running Win9x clients.
kx16.dll <-- Probably not needed unless you are running DOS clients.
kxrpc.exe <-- Probably useless as it has to run on the server and can
only be run on NT. It's for Windows 95 to become group-aware.
We can get around the need.
I then wrote the logon.kix file that is shown in ???. I chose to keep it all in one file, but it can be split up and linked via include directives.
Example 9.14. Kixstart Control File File: logon.kix
; This script just calls the other scripts.
; First we want to get things done for everyone.
; Second, we do first-time login stuff.
; Third, we go through the group-oriented scripts one at a time.
; We want to check for group membership here to avoid the overhead of running
; scripts which don't apply.
call "\\massive\netlogon\scripts\main.kix"
call "\\massive\netlogon\scripts\setup.kix"
IF INGROUP("MEGANET2\ACCT")
call "scripts\acct.kix"
ENDIF
IF INGROUP("MEGANET2\ENGR","MEGANET2\RECEPTIONIST")
call "\\massive\netlogon\scripts\engr.kix"
ENDIF
IF INGROUP("MEGANET2\FURN")
call "\\massive\netlogon\scripts\furn.kix"
ENDIF
IF INGROUP("MEGANET2\TRUSS")
call "\\massive\netlogon\scripts\truss.kix"
ENDIF
Example 9.15. Kixstart Control File File: main.kix
break on
; Choose whether to hide the login window or not
IF INGROUP("MEGANET2\Domain Admins")
USE Z: \\massive\everything
SETCONSOLE("show")
ELSE
; Nobody cares about seeing the login script except admins
SETCONSOLE("hide")
ENDIF
; Delete all previously connected shares
USE * /delete
SETTITLE("Logging on @USERID to @LDOMAIN at @TIME")
; Set the time on the workstation
$Timeserver = "\\massive"
Settime $TimeServer
; Map the home directory
USE H: @HOMESHR ; connect to user's home share
IF @ERROR = 0
H:
CD @HOMEDIR ; change directory to user's home directory
ENDIF
; Everyone gets the N drive
USE N: \\massive\network
Example 9.16. Kixstart Control File File: setup.kix, Part A
; My setup.kix is where all of the redirection stuff happens. Note that with
; the use of registry keys, ths only happens the first time they log in ,or if
; I delete the pertinent registry keys which triggers it to happen again:
; Check to see if we have written the Borkholder subkey before
$RETURNCODE = EXISTKEY("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Borkholder")
IF NOT $RETURNCODE = 0
; Add key for Borkholder-specific things on the first login
ADDKEY("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Borkholder")
; The following key gets deleted at the end of the first login
ADDKEY("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Borkholder\FIRST_LOGIN")
ENDIF
; People with laptops need My Documents to be in their profile. People with
; desktops can have My Documents redirected to their home directory to avoid
; long delays with logging out and out-of-sync files.
; Check to see if this is the first login -- doesn't make sense to do this
; at the very first login
$RETURNCODE = EXISTKEY("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Borkholder\FIRST_LOGIN")
IF NOT $RETURNCODE = 0
; We don't want to do this stuff for people with laptops or people in the FURN
; group. (They store their profiles in a different server)
IF NOT INGROUP("MASSIVE\Laptop","MASSIVE\FURN")
$RETURNCODE=EXISTKEY("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Borkholder\profile_copied")
; A crude way to tell what OS our profile is for and copy the "My Documents"
; to the redirected folder on the server. It works because the profiles
; are stored as \\server\profiles\user\architecture
IF NOT $RETURNCODE = 0
IF EXIST("\\massive\profiles\@userID\WinXP")
copy "\\massive\profiles\@userID\WinXP\My Documents\*"
"\\massive\@userID\"
ENDIF
IF EXIST("\\massive\profiles\@userID\Win2K")
copy "\\massive\profiles\@userID\Win2K\My Documents\*"
"\\massive\@userID\"
ENDIF
IF EXIST("\\massive\profiles\@userID\WinNT")
copy "\\massive\profiles\@userID\WinNT\My Documents\*"
"\\massive\@userID\"
ENDIF
Example 9.17. Kixstart Control File File: setup.kix, Part B
; Now we will write the registry values to redirect the locations of "My
Documents"
; and other folders.
ADDKEY("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Borkholder\profile_copied")
WRITEVALUE("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders", "Personal","\\massive\@userID","REG_SZ")
WRITEVALUE("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders", "My Pictures", "\\massive\@userID\My Pictures", "REG_SZ")
IF @PRODUCTTYPE="Windows 2000 Professional" or @PRODUCTTYPE="Windows XP
Professional"
WRITEVALUE("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders", "My Videos", "\\massive\@userID\My Videos", "REG_SZ")
WRITEVALUE("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders", "My Music", "\\massive\@userID\My Music", "REG_SZ")
WRITEVALUE("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders", "My eBooks", "\\massive\@userID\My eBooks", "REG_SZ")
ENDIF
ENDIF
ENDIF
; Now we will delete the FIRST_LOGIN subkey that we made before.
; Note - to run this script again you will want to delete the HKCU\Borkholder
; subkey, log out, and log back in.
$RETURNVALUE = EXISTKEY("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Borkholder\FIRST_LOGIN")
IF $RETURNVALUE = 0
DELKEY("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Borkholder\FIRST_LOGIN")
ENDIF
Example 9.18. Kixstart Control File File: acct.kix
; And here is one group-oriented script to show what can be
; done that way: acct.kix:
IF INGROUP("MASSIVE\Acct_Admin","MASSIVE\HR")
USE I: \\MEGANET2\HR_PR
ENDIF
; Set up printer
$RETURNVALUE = existkey("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers\,,massive,acct_hp8500")
IF NOT $RETURNVALUE = 0
ADDPRINTERCONNECTION("\\massive\acct_hp8500")
SETDEFAULTPRINTER("\\massive\acct_hp8500")
ENDIF
; Set up drive mappings
USE M: \\massive\ACCT
IF INGROUP("MEGANET2\ABRA")
USE T: \\trussrv\abra
ENDIF
As you can see in the script, I redirect the My Documents to the user's home share if they are not in the “Laptop” group. I also add printers on a group-by-group basis, and if applicable I setthe group printer. For this to be effective, the print drivers must be installed on the Samba server in the [print$] share. Ample documentation exists about how to do that so I did not cover it.
I actually call this script via the logon.bat script in the [netlogon] directory:
\\corpsrv\netlogon\kix32 \\corpsrv\netlogon\logon.kix /f
I only had to fully qualify the paths for Windows 9x, as Windows NT and greater automatically add [NETLOGON] to the path.
Also of note for Win9x is that the drive mappings and printer setup will not work because they rely on RPC. One merely has to put the appropriate settings into the c:\autoexec.bat file or map the drives manually. One option would be to check the OS as part of the Kixtart script, and if it is Win9x and if it is the first login, copy a pre-made autoexec.bat to the C: drive. I only have three such machines and one is going away in the very near future, so it was easier to do it by hand.
At this point I was able to add the users. This is the part that really falls into “upgrade. I moved the users over one group at a time, starting with the people who used the least amount of resources on the network. With each group that I moved, I first logged in as a “standard” user in that group and took careful note of their environment, mainly the printers they used, their PATH, and what network resources they had access to (most importantly which ones they actually needed access to).
I would then add the user's SambaSamAccount information as mentioned earlier, and join the computer to the domain. The very first thing I had to do was to copy the user's profile to the new server. This was very important, and I really struggled with the most effective way to do it. Here is the method that worked for every one of my users on Windows NT, 2000, and XP:
Log in as the user on the domain. This creates the local copy of the user's profile and copies it to the server as they log out.
Reboot the computer and log in as the local machine administrator.
Right-click My Computer, click Properties, and navigate to the user profiles tab (varies per version of Windows).
Select the user's local profile (COMPUTERNAME\username), and click the Copy To button.
In the next dialog, copy it directly to the profiles share on the Samba server (\\PDCname\profiles\user\<architecture> in my case). You will have had to make a connection to the share as that user (e.g.: Windows Explorer type \\PDCname\profiles\username).
When the copy is complete (it can take a while) log out, and log back in as the user. All his/her settings and all contents of My Documents, Favorites, and the registry should have been copied successfully.
If it doesn't look right (the dead giveaway is the desktop background) shut down the computer without logging out (power cycle) and try logging in as the user again. If it still doesn't work, repeat the steps above. I only had to ever repeat it once.
WORDS TO THE WISE:
If the user was anything other than a standard user on his/her system before, you will save yourself some headaches by giving them identical permissions (on the local machine) as their domain account, BEFORE copying their profile over. Do this through the User Administrator in the Control Panel, after joining the computer to the domain and before logging as that user for the first time. Otherwise they will have trouble with permissions on their registry keys.
If any application was installed for the user only, rather than for the entire system, it will probably not work without being reinstalled.
After all these steps are accomplished, only cleanup details are left. Make sure user's shortcuts and “Network Places” point to the appropriate place on the new server, check the important applications to be sure they work as expected and troubleshoot any problems that might arise, check to be sure the user's printers are present and working. By the way, if there are any network printers installed as system printers (the Novell way) you will need to log in as a local administrator and delete them.
For my non-laptop systems, I would then log in and out a couple times as the user, to be sure that their registry settings were modified, then I was finished.
Some compatibility issues that cropped up included:
Blackberry client It did not like having its registry settings moved around, and had to be reinstalled. Also it needed write permissions to a portion of the hard drive, and I had to give it those manually on the one system where this was an issue.
CAMedia digital camera software for Canon cameras I had all kinds of trouble with the registry. I had to use the Run as service to open the registry of the local user while logged in as the domain user, and give the domain user the appropriate permissions to some registry keys, then export that portion of the registry to a file. Then as the domain user I had to import that file into the registry.
Crystal Reports version 7 More registry problems that were solved by re-copying the user's profile.
Printing from legacy applications I found out that Novell sent its jobs to the printer in a raw format. CUPS sends them in Postscript by default. I had to make a second printer definition for one printer and tell CUPS specifically to send raw data to the printer, and assign this printer to the LPT port with Kixtart's version of the “net use”command.
These were all eventually solved by elbow grease, queries to the Samba mailing list and others, and diligence. The complete migration took about 5 weeks. My userbase is relatively small, but includes multiple versions of Windows, multiple Linux member servers, a mechanized saw, a pen plotter, and legacy applications written in Qbasic and R:Base, just to name a few. I actually ended up making some of these applications work better (or work again, as some of them had stopped functioning on the old server) because as part of the process I had to find out how things were supposed to work.
The one thing I have not been able to get working is a very old database that we had around for reference purposes which uses Novell's Btrieve engine.
As the resources compare, I went from 95% disk usage to just around 10%. I went from a very high load on the server to an average load of between 1 and 2 runnable processes on the server. I have improved the security and robustness of the system. I have also implemented ClamAV Antivirus which scans the entire Samba server for viruses every two hours and quarantines them. I have found it much less problematic than our ancient version of Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, and much more up-to-date.
In short, my users are much happier now that the new server is running, that is what is important to me.