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.

Refer to bugzilla:5897 for details of following error

	Note:
	You may see an error message "The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted." when logging in for the first time. This is a harmless message. Windows 7 after it joins the domain tries to resolve its dns name (and assumes that the domain controller will setup a dns entry for its hostname. See following for a MS hotfix [1]

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.

	Note:
	see bug 7002) for registry edits on a Windows 7 workstation to enable Domain login and roaming profiles.

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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