Windows 7 Support

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

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 Server 8 (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).

Join a SME Server 8.0 with Win7

Before to make a trick to your w7 registry, you can not join the SME Server Domain, but we can do it easily either with an usb key or by the network with http.

• Save the Win7 registry patch (win7samba.reg) from https://your-server-ip/server-resources/regedit/ with your favourite web browser
• On your windows seven, start "regedit" by the start menu and import the win7samba.reg
• Set your domain instead of your workgroup. Add the client machine to the domain as normal.
• Log in as the 'admin' user of your SME Server with the same password for the first time
• You have to reboot your computer to reach the domain

	Tip:
	To connect a windows Seven client to your domain, Go to the "start menu", right click on computer, select "Properties", select the link "change Settings", then click on "Change" Tab.. Enter your servers "Domain" value in the domain field and 'Connect'. Enter the username of admin(*) with the servers admin password when asked, and you should get back the response 'Connected to Domain'.

(*) Admin or any user in the 'Domain Admins' group can join the domain.

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Adding Windows 7 Support to SME Server 7

	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.

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 and bugzilla:7002 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.

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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