Samba password server or how to share credentials between servers

[Normand Leclerc]

Hi,

I am in the process of setting up a new server; of course using FreeNAS. I am having a bit of an issue on how I should share users credentials between two units.

We had a QNAP for a while but the unit soon became overloaded. Instead of replacing the unit, I decided to use the server for a subset of the company and have a more powerful one for the rest; hence the FreeNAS server.

Now I don't want to have two sets of users; I'd like to have a single password server. I have done this on my own home servers but require manual modifications of the configuration file which would become unmanageable with a GUI. I would like to stick with the FreeNAS configuration GUI to ease system updates.

What would be recommended? I am trying to setup an AD server right now but am stuck in jail/non-jail install (AD server on main FreeNAS, DNS in a jail.....). I could beat myself to it but since I don't really need an AD server, I thought I'd ask for advice.

How should I do this?


Thanks

 

[Ericloewe]

The Samba docs specifically recommend not running a single machine as both AD DC and member, due to networking concerns. A jail may or may not be able to bypass this, I'm not familiar with the whole thing.

 

[Normand Leclerc]

I read something like this. I think the whole AD thing is an overkill for what I want to do but I don't know how to do otherwise with FreeNAS. I've looked into LDAP; I have to see if I can use LDAP for password sharing and plain old password for user access.

I don't really want to have machines part of a domain right now; I'd use the domain only for the two servers and users just access the server as a workgroup member. There must be something easier than a complete AD.

Someone must have done this........