Look into ldap; if you are a busy admin as you say you are - then why re-invent the wheel? There are numerous LDAP account management systems, and bearing in mind that you're using linux somewhere at the desktop level - you can use LDAP for BOTH samba and UNIX accounts. As far as locking/unlocking an account goes, simply enable/disable it via LDAP, simple ldapmodify command from the shell and you're good to go - or even better, use PERL and make yourself a simple web-interface if you'd prefer.
In my humble experience, LDAP is definetly the way to go. We've got a single LDAP repository of all users, domains, machine accounts, idmaps, etc. This repository is then made redundant by slave ldap servers which also enables load-sharing, and fail-safe systems. It's eay to work with, works across almost any platform: we have Sun Solaris/Sparc Workstations, FreeBSD servers & workstations on the UNIX side using nss_ldap and pam_ldap, as well as numerous windows accounts in a domain environment serviced by the FreeBSD servers running OpenLDAP and Samba. We're using LAM (LDAP Account Manager); a free(ly) available PHP-based LDAP Account Management GUI - which allows us to administer users, accounts, and machine accounts from anywhere on the network via a web browser. If time, conveinience, and ease-of-use are you biggest administrative hurdles - then LDAP is what you're missing. -- Nathan Vidican [EMAIL PROTECTED] Windsor Match Plate & Tool Ltd. http://www.wmptl.com/ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher Welsh Sent: Monday, July 04, 2005 9:45 AM To: samba@lists.samba.org Subject: [Samba] Lock accounts with SAMBA Hi, I'm a busy sysadmin locking and unlocking user accounts. I'd like to be able to do it from my linux -kerberos enabled samba workstation. I can easily use net commands to see if a user's account is locked in the ADS. How do I actually lock it from within samba. I've written a user management system at the school that does lots of things, I'd like it to be able to do this using Linux. So any advice, would be great fully appreciated. Chris -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
