Noob

[Coderifous]

At work I am tasked with setting up a "Unix Server that Windows Clients use". The requirements couldn't be more vague, but I've dug a little deeper and learned that they want authentication to be handled by the Unix server, they want shared resources on the unix server, and they also want to have certain COTS programs to be available to certain groups of users.

All this, in my limited knowledge, pointed to samba.

Can I please get some advice as to whether samba is the right solution, and some notion of how long it typically takes to configure this kind of setup?

I have a Mandrake linux laptop I'm going to use as my test "server", and a Windows XP box I'm going to use as my test "client".

Thanks in advance.

 

[meekrob]

Samba is a great solution, and the only choice really. I've replaced a Windows 2000 domain controller, with roaming profiles, login scripts and so forth. However it wasn't easy. But now that it's set up ... it's great.

This COTS program might be an issue if it relays on an older flat file database though. I was able to get around an issue I encountered with a paradox db, but the performance was slow. So I would recommend load testing before you implement.