Samba-3 has a special facility that makes it possible to maintain identical UIDs and GIDs on all servers in a distributed network. A distributed network is one where there exists a PDC, one or more BDCs, and/or one or more domain member servers. Why is this important? This is important if files are being shared over more than one protocol (e.g., NFS) and where users are copying files across UNIX/Linux systems using tools such as rsync .

The special facility is enabled using a parameter called idmap backend . The default setting for this parameter is an empty string. Technically it is possible to use an LDAP-based idmap backend for UIDs and GIDs, but it makes most sense when this is done for network configurations that also use LDAP for the SAM backend. Example Configuration with the LDAP idmap Backend shows that configuration.

A network administrator who wants to make significant use of LDAP backends will sooner or later be exposed to the excellent work done by PADL Software. PADL https://www.padl.com have produced and released to open source an array of tools that might be of interest. These tools include: