Samba primary domain controller- howto?

[bluesky]

Hi everyone,
Well after years of Windows i am beginning to try my hand in the Linux world. Things are slowly coming together, with a lot of online help and help from a couple linux guru friends, lol.

Anyhow, here is my latest greatest project: Using Samba as a primary domain controller in a school computer lab environment. Currently the workstations are xp home, but upgrades are being planned to upgrade to xp pro workstations. Currently we are on a simple workgroup using static ip's (very straight forward).

We do however have a Debian Sarge server setup and it's currently running Samba to provide file/folder sharing across our XP workstations. Now this is all fine and dandy, but we'd like to go to the next step and have user accounts so each user can have their own personal storage folder rather than resorting to the public shared folders we currently use Samba for.

So, i rather than looking to MS Server 2003, i was presented with the idea of using Samba for the PDC.... after all we already have both Debian Sarge and Samba running, and the price of doing it is way is certainly right.

So that's where i am..... i found a nice guide that describes the information needed to be added in (/etc/samba/smb.conf). However since we do not have any actual domain in place, that's what i need to get straightened out in my mind..... the first 2 things asked to provide are:

workgroup = THIS_DOMAIN
netbios name = THIS_SERVERS_NETBIOS_NAME

So what can i actually use for "THIS_DOMAIN" and "THIS_SERVERS_NETBIOS_NAME"? Can i just pick any name that i feel like using?

Thanks for any help you can provide to this Linux noob, lol. I'm sure i will have more questions as i progress through this little project.

[iwanabeguru]

yes , you can use anything as workgroup name , and you must use the host name of the server for "netbios name" option

i suggest you download the official samba howto and reference guide
google keyword:the official samba howto