I’m doing some work for a friend of mine who has just gotten a machine running SBS 2003 to replace a FreeBSD box with Samba that’s acting as the PDC for his office domain. The existing domain is called OFFICE, the new one is named for his company - let’s say ACME. I need to migrate his users from the old domain to the new one and would ideally like to be able to do so without losing any of their existing settings.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to use the Files and Settings Transfer wizard to do this?
No first hand experience (with Samba-to-Windows ‘migrations’) but SBS servers are terribly particular about being the PDC… basically they can’t NOT be the PDC. If you can figure out how to add the Samba to the SBS’s domain as a backup DC you may be able to transfer all the roles straight-up but the catch would be not losing or breaking whatever passes for AD on the Samba when you alter it to conform to the SBS.
Again, not sure but I would not imagine that the Files and Settings Transfer wizard is going to aid you in any meaningful way. Wish I could be more specific; sorry.
Samba.org is going to be your best bet for information. Having done this a loooooong time ago I remember giving up in frustration and just recreating everything again in the new domain. Things have changed significantly now, and I notice they even have some pages on Samba about migrating TO active directory.
I think I need to clarify here - I don’t really have an interest in doing anything with the old Samba domain other than, eventually, switching it off entirely. What I want is to take the local settings for the old domain user (i.e., the contents of C:\Document and Settings%USER%.OLDDOMAIN on my friend’s laptop) and migrate them to the new domain user’s settings ([i]C:\Documents and Settings%USER%.NEWDOMAIN[i]).
What I’ve settled on doing - or trying, anyway - is using the User State Migration Tools. This seems to have worked pretty effectively for the test user that I set up in both domains but I’ve no idea how effectively it’s going to work for a user profile that’s built up months and years of cruft. I think that when push comes to shove I’ll be alright as long as I can get his outlook.pst file moved over with his email flowing back into it and his documents etc. moved so if there really isn’t a simple way to do this then it’s no big deal. Just makes me more appreciative of my Unix machines though.
