Active Directory and Unix interoperability

[Cotton213]

Question: in a shop where all (DNS, mail, etc.) is controlled by Unix systems, do I need AD on my 2000 server?

Background:
We are a small UNIX house. We run Windows 98 and 2000 Pro using VMware for linux. We have never had a Windows Domain - I know nothing of NT. All critical files are stored on our unix systems and accessed via Samba.

We recently purchased an IBM server running Windows 2000 Server to 1) run our new DB2 database and QuickBooks; 2) split our Windows-type work out from our engineering server (just for performance-sake). Email, DNS, Samba, etc. does and shall continue to be controlled from the Unix side. My problem is setting up the 2000 Server - do I need AD or not? Just when I think I do, then I think I don't. All I really want from the server is to run the 2 apps above, share Windows files (MS office, etc.), and handle permission-setting on those files (to the best of the ability of the OS - 98 and 2000). I don't need this server to handle any internet anything, and it should use the Unix box for name resolution.

Can I avoid AD, and do you have any configuration advice? When I have AD configured it seems to want to rule the world, and then there is that documented bug with primary and secondary DNS servers (2000 server wants to be on top, then won't look anywhere else).

Thanks,
Barb

 

[david902]

If you want to run a domain and use a domain controller
then you've got to use AD and AD will want to use MS DNS

you can setup a stand-alone server ( non PDC ) and setup a peer-peer network and share files that way. give it a IP Address and point DNS to your UNIX servers, should be clean and simple.

on a peer-peer network administration can be a nightmare because every server will require a user/pass and there will
be no way to sync them, with one server, not a problem.

 

[Cotton213]

Right now, and for the forseeable future, we'll probably have just the 2 servers - a unix and a Windows 2000. With vmware running the windows locally, users just log in once a day to each server. This is no big burden right now. Hopefully as our company grows, I'll get smarter

So, I'm currently just running Windows 2000 as a standalone server, adding users and groups to the server computer. Do you have any recommendations on how to let the linux systems see the windows files from the server? Do I need Services for Unix for NFS or some such thing? Samba works great the other way around.
Thanks