D-arb 1; Active Directory 0

I work in a department which runs it's network using a windows domain controller (active directory). Now, as it stands, Samba can operate as a drop in ADS for a lot of cases, so it's ADS is pretty good. The major limitation to Samba's support is lack of DFS (Dynamic file share), the Microsoft equvalent of network symlinks. But that is not what this article is about.

Every few weeks my domain password expires. If you remember to change your password before it expires, then no problem, you can use smb, or net. Unfortunately I usually forget (since I use samba so infrequently), and then it means a trip to my nearest domain computer, to change my password, and back. I decided to take action. I dropped a sh script in /etc/cron.daily/ called 'rucsict'. The magic is simple:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/net -U Username%Password -S the.domain.controller RAP PASSWORD Username Password Password

So every day it refreshes my password. It could easily generate a new password every two weeks or something, but I am more worried about saving myself a trip every few weeks to change my password. So, I win.