I've been playing around for a couple of weeks now trying to build a working "Samba server." Samba is a reverse-engineering of Microsoft Server that runs on Linux and is free and open-source. If one wanted to get back into the microcomputer administration field (and I very much do), this would be a way to keep his Active Directory (and Linux) admin skills sharp.
As of about two hours ago, I have (both running on my main workstation) a working virtual Rocky Linux 9.5 Samba server and a virtual Windows 11 Pro client that can log into and administer it! This was *not* trivial to configure and was complicated by the fact that the server is virtualized.
A small demonstration:
As with most Linux products, when you're working on a Samba server, you're working at a command prompt. With this command we list all user accounts and then filter the output to show only lines containing the word "squirrel" (case-insenitive). As you can see, there are no accounts containing squirrel. The one line of output regards the server's network adapter.
We head over to our Windows client. In the administration software, we look at our Users container, and there are no squirrel accounts, so we begin the creation of just such an account.
As we see in our new screen cap, our friend Rocky now has an account (circled in red).
And going back to our Samba VM, we repeat the command to list all user accounts. I don't filter it for squirrel, but browsing the full output shows that Rocket J. Squirrel now has a user account.
I have paid $0.00 to Microsoft but am able to practice/hone my MS Active Directory skills in a working server environment. It would be $199 to register the Windows 11 VM, so I can only keep it updated for 90 days. After that, I'll just build a new client machine (the easy part) when I need it.
tl;dr
I've had a fun day geeking out with virtual machines on my computer.
As of about two hours ago, I have (both running on my main workstation) a working virtual Rocky Linux 9.5 Samba server and a virtual Windows 11 Pro client that can log into and administer it! This was *not* trivial to configure and was complicated by the fact that the server is virtualized.
A small demonstration:
As with most Linux products, when you're working on a Samba server, you're working at a command prompt. With this command we list all user accounts and then filter the output to show only lines containing the word "squirrel" (case-insenitive). As you can see, there are no accounts containing squirrel. The one line of output regards the server's network adapter.
We head over to our Windows client. In the administration software, we look at our Users container, and there are no squirrel accounts, so we begin the creation of just such an account.
As we see in our new screen cap, our friend Rocky now has an account (circled in red).
And going back to our Samba VM, we repeat the command to list all user accounts. I don't filter it for squirrel, but browsing the full output shows that Rocket J. Squirrel now has a user account.
I have paid $0.00 to Microsoft but am able to practice/hone my MS Active Directory skills in a working server environment. It would be $199 to register the Windows 11 VM, so I can only keep it updated for 90 days. After that, I'll just build a new client machine (the easy part) when I need it.
tl;dr
I've had a fun day geeking out with virtual machines on my computer.
