Samba replacement

[Chris Midkiff]

Wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction:

I'm (finally) in the process of replacing our company's WinNT Domain controller with Linux and 
Samba.  I attempted to make the switch last night and had one issue that stoped me cold.  I am 
using the same domain name that we were using on NT (just unplugged the NT server).  In order to 
get our clients (win2k pro) to log in correctly, I have to re-add the machine to the domain from 
the windows client 'add to domain' process. Once I do this, the samba controller will accept the 
machine's logons.  

Problem is, Windows creates a new user profile for this 'New' logon.  Same user name, same domain 
name, different domain server.  I'd have to spend all night here copying settings to the new user 
profile, re-setting up email accounts, etc. Does anyone know of a way to avoid this?  The less 
impact this change has on the end users, the better.

The way I see it, I either need to 
(1) Let the clients logon without having to go through the windows add-to-domain process, so that 
the client will not realize that the domain has changed, and won't create a new profile (This would 
be Preferred) or 

(2) use some sort of utility to copy the old user profile to the new one. (It would have to copy 
_everything_ to have no impact on the users, including cookies, etc.  You can't copy most of this 
stuff manually...  I don't even know if any such critter exists.)

Also, If I can make this change go smoothly, I was thinking of putting together a 'Migrating from 
NT Domain to Samba Domain Howto' that we could put on the lug site.  Believe it or not, the year 
old Starband howto that I put on the lug site is still drawing readers.

Any ideas?

Chris Midkiff
chris at datacaptech.com