[chooser]

My goal is to strip linux down to nothing and have a machine thats only purpose in life is SAMBA. I am familiar with Redhat Linux but have a hard time understanding how to do things sometimes. I would also understand what steps I am going to have to take to strip this down as well. I am just looking for some helpful sites or information on how to achieve my goal. Thanks in advance.

[Dolda2000]

Well, that depends on just how much you want to strip it. If you want to do it die-hard, re-compile your kernel without virtually anything but networking and smb. I guess this machine is supposed to be a smb server?
Begin by killing of processes that you don't need and deleting all directories that you won't need. You can probably take away the current rc.d system under init, and just make init start smbd and nmbd instead.

[chooser]

That is exactly what I want to do. Thanks for the speedy reply. I would imagine this is a common thing. Making an app server in windows environments is accept you have a ton of overhead with that. I am looking to prove that Linux can serve as a viable solution for an application server. Where could I learn about recompiling the kernel? In laymans terms not man pages Thanks again for the speedy response.

[majorwoo]

try tldp.org (The Linux Documentation Project) they have 1.5billion (and a half) really good HOWTO's/GUIDE

also, redhat has some on their site, easiest way to find those is off of google

[chooser]

Thanks I will try those sites. I use google and find a lot of sites but like I said anyone can explain something its getting the otherside to understand. I need it in laymans terms as I am not yet a linux guru. I appreciate the help.

Chooser

[majorwoo]

sure

tldp.org has the HOWTO's that will walk you through it, and if there is something you dont udnerstand in one of them there is like a 80% chance it wil show you were to read up on it

[chooser]

Ok here is another one for you. A friend of mine is doing this at the same time and said that if you have a windows 2k environment you have to touch both machines as far as usernames and passwords are concerned. Is there no token sharing or some equivelant between linux and windows so that if you log into your windows network you are automatically able to get into the linux boxes shares based on rights? I guess what I am trying to get at is that I want to be able to configure a linux box to just be a fileserver using samba and drop it in a network and have it figure out who the users and passwords are off of the Windows based PDC. Is this possible?

[Dolda2000]

Since UNIX and windows are so different systems, there is only minimal sharing between them. The windows network doesn't provide UIDs and GIDs for users, for example, and cannot be used alone for logging in on a UNIX system. If it's just supposed to work within SAMBA, it might be possible though. I hear that they're extending to using Active Directory Services within the next version or so, so it might be configurable by then. I don't know, however.

[chooser]

I dont want to be a downer here but that seems like a real drag. Its a really hard selling point for someone such as myself trying to phase out a Windows environment when the one product that works with windows doesnt exaclty work with windows. I hope what you said about active directory is true.

[Dolda2000]

I'm not sure how it works in a native windows environment (since I haven't really been interrested in a such), so I might very well be wrong.