Help Needed configuring Samba on Webserver

[Arthur Pemberton]

Tim Holmes wrote:

>Earlier this week, I posted a message asking for help with a number of
>problems / Projects using Fedora Core 2 or 3 within our network.  The
>responses indicated that I should go ahead and post the questions to
>this list, so here is the first one that I am having problems with
>
>Our webserver is a Pentium 4 2Ghz server running fully up to date FC2
>with Apache and Samba installed.  
>
>Our domain is a windows 2003 Domain using active directory.  What I want
>to be able to do is to have each student have their own directory on the
>web server that they can post their web design projects into, and then
>we have apache to use ~username addressing for their sites.  
>
>As it stands right now, I use the following procedure to make this work,
>which is not a problem for a class of 5 students, but for a large class
>it turns into a large amount of work
>
>Procedure to setup student for samba access
>
>1 Create the user directory on the webserver
>2. Create the linux user - system/users and groups
>3. Create a public_html directory under their home directory
>4. chmod home directory 755
>5. chmod public_html directory 755
>6. chown home directory -R to user
>7. chgrp home directory to apache
>8. create samba user -- system-config-samba
>9. input windows password into samba as samba password
>
>  
>
Well since you have the steps so well setup, why not just make a script 
that accepts the students name,username and password and then goes 
through steps 1-9?

>everything should then work
>
>This procedure works.  It takes 3 - 5 minutes per itineration, which
>gets tedious at best.  The problem comes in the fact that next year we
>want to implement a similar system for storing all of our user files on
>our samba file server, and creating 250 accounts like this is just out
>of the question.  
>
>I realize that I am a new linux administrator, and that my understanding
>of Linux and Samba are fairly limited, but it seems that there must be
>an easier way of accomplishing this.  The point that especially wrankles
>me is having to ask the user for their password, and then manually enter
>it into samba to get it to recognize the password, it should be able to
>authenticate against the active directory and work that way.  
>
>I could really use some help here -- I have a class of almost 20
>students who will be starting web design projects on Wednesday of next
>week, so I would very much like to get this working before then, cuz
>otherwise Tuesday night is going to be a real pain creating all those
>users
>
>TIM
>
>I can be reached on list, off list at tholmes at mcaschool.net, on Yahoo IM
>at W8TAH, and on AOL IM at W8TAHHAM
>
>TIM
>
>Tim Holmes
> 
>IT Manager / Webmaster
>Medina Christian Academy
>A Higher Standard...
> 
>Jeremiah 33:3
>Jeremiah 29:11
>Esther 4:14
>
>
>  
>