Best samba+ldap distro?

[mchaney]

So I've got a Debian system up and functioning as a Primary Domain Controller at the school where I work. Then we got 70+ new WinXP Pro machines, and the roaming profiles and whatever else they do is overwhelming the machine. So now I need some backup domain controllers, which means I need to get LDAP implemented. After about a month of frustration spent trying to figure out what to do from various howtos, I think it's time to look into something other than Debian... or some means of migrating my users to OpenLDAP other than the MigrationTools package (which is where I've had most of my troubles). Is there a distro out there that makes it easy to set up a Samba PDC/BDC with LDAP? I'm at the point where re-entering all the user info by hand into a fresh system is looking more efficient than the mess I have now.

[ph34r]

Since you work at a school, you can get RedHat advanced server enterprise super duper whatever marketspeak it is for the low low educational price of $50. I don't think it comes with the full support package, but I'm sure that what you are doing is probably covered in their docs and email help. BTW - try to setup a test system and do several migrations to practice - even using vmware on a single beefy machine to emulate a few "servers" would make it worth while, just to assure success. Oh, and try to do your change between semesters.

[mchaney]

I have been testing migrations on a second machine (it's the machine that I intend to use for a BDC) so I'm in a position to blow it away several times and start over. Thanks for the heads up about the Redhat Educational pricing; I'll have to check it out. As for waiting until between semesters... the ap that's having the biggest problem with the server load is our grade software system, so folks will be very unhappy if they have to do grades 3 more times under the current situation... (all it requires on the server end is shared folders, but the program executable itself is stored on that share...)