Windows 7 Support

	Skill level: medium
	The instructions on this page require a basic knowledge of linux.

	Warning:
	This howto is based upon limited testing and may cause SME Server to experience issues when backing up, installing regular updates, and upgrading to version 8 upon release. SerNet packages are NOT supported by SME Server developers. You should only use these instructions if Windows 7 support is critical for your environment.

Author

David Harper

Background

Windows 7 was released in October 2009. Due to changes in the way that trust relationships are established with domain controllers, older versions of Samba do not allow Windows 7 clients to log in once joined to a domain.

Although an upstream fix was made available for SME 8 beta (based on CentOS 5, see bug 5425), there is no comparable fix available from the upstream vendor for SME 7.x (based on CentOS 4).

Adding Windows 7 Support

Thanks to SerNet, SME 7 users can now install an updated version of Samba which fixes the domain trust issues.

Installation

• Add the SerNet repository for CentOS 4.x

db yum_repositories set SerNet repository \
 BaseURL http://ftp.sernet.de/pub/samba/3.5/centos/4 \
 EnableGroups yes \
 GPGCheck no \
 Name 'SerNet Samba Team packages (CentOS 4)' \
 Visible yes \
 status enabled
signal-event yum-modify

• Update SME Server - the new Samba packages will install automatically.

yum update
signal-event post-upgrade ; signal-event reboot

Configuring Clients

• Install the Windows 7 registry patch from http://yourserver/server-resources/
• Add the client machine to the domain as normal.

	Note:
	You may see an error message on join regarding primary DNS suffix. This doesn't seem to affect any actual functionality

• Log in as the 'admin' user for the first time.

	Note:
	You may see an error message when logging in for the first time. This appears to be a once off timeout issue which does not recur.

Roaming Profiles

Windows 7 clients require that a version 2 profile folder exist in the profiles$ share, which on SME Server is located in /home/e-smith/files/samba/profiles.

This additional profile folder is automatically provisioned for existing users when the installing latest version of e-smith-samba (see bug 5423). After this point, all new user accounts have the folder created as soon as they are added.

	Note:
	If version 2 profile folders are not available, Windows 7 will create a temporary profile when you log in. Should you experience this problem, make sure that your SME Server installation is fully up to date.

Version 2 profiles are not compatible with Windows XP and earlier. If you have mixed environments you will be required to maintain two separate profiles for each user.

Source Code

SerNet publishes the source code for their latest Samba build at http://ftp.sernet.de/pub/samba/3.5/src/rpm/

Code for older builds is also available at http://ftp.sernet.de/pub/samba/old/src/rpm/

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