There are two primary means of managing the rights assigned to users and groups on a Samba server. The NT4 User Manager for Domains may be used from any Windows NT4, 2000, or XP Professional domain member client to connect to a Samba domain controller and view/modify the rights assignments. This application, however, appears to have bugs when run on a client running Windows 2000 or later; therefore, Samba provides a command-line utility for performing the necessary administrative actions.

The net rpc rights utility in Samba 3.0.11 has three new subcommands:

By default, no privileges are initially assigned to any account because certain actions will be performed as root once smbd determines that a user has the necessary rights. For example, when joining a client to a Windows domain, add machine script must be executed with superuser rights in most cases. For this reason, you should be very careful about handing out privileges to accounts.

Access as the root user (UID=0) bypasses all privilege checks.

The privileges that have been implemented in Samba-3.0.11 are shown below. It is possible, and likely, that additional privileges may be implemented in later releases of Samba. It is also likely that any privileges currently implemented but not used may be removed from future releases as a housekeeping matter, so it is important that the successful as well as unsuccessful use of these facilities should be reported on the Samba mailing lists.

For reference purposes, a Windows NT4 Primary Domain Controller reports support for the following privileges:

         SeCreateTokenPrivilege  Create a token object
  SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege  Replace a process level token
          SeLockMemoryPrivilege  Lock pages in memory
       SeIncreaseQuotaPrivilege  Increase quotas
      SeMachineAccountPrivilege  Add workstations to domain
                 SeTcbPrivilege  Act as part of the operating system
            SeSecurityPrivilege  Manage auditing and security log
       SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege  Take ownership of files or other objects
          SeLoadDriverPrivilege  Load and unload device drivers
       SeSystemProfilePrivilege  Profile system performance
          SeSystemtimePrivilege  Change the system time
SeProfileSingleProcessPrivilege  Profile single process
SeIncreaseBasePriorityPrivilege  Increase scheduling priority
      SeCreatePagefilePrivilege  Create a pagefile
     SeCreatePermanentPrivilege  Create permanent shared objects
              SeBackupPrivilege  Back up files and directories
             SeRestorePrivilege  Restore files and directories
            SeShutdownPrivilege  Shut down the system
               SeDebugPrivilege  Debug programs
               SeAuditPrivilege  Generate security audits
   SeSystemEnvironmentPrivilege  Modify firmware environment values
        SeChangeNotifyPrivilege  Bypass traverse checking
      SeRemoteShutdownPrivilege  Force shutdown from a remote system

And Windows 200x/XP Domain Controllers and workstations reports to support the following privileges:

         SeCreateTokenPrivilege  Create a token object
  SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege  Replace a process level token
          SeLockMemoryPrivilege  Lock pages in memory
       SeIncreaseQuotaPrivilege  Increase quotas
      SeMachineAccountPrivilege  Add workstations to domain
                 SeTcbPrivilege  Act as part of the operating system
            SeSecurityPrivilege  Manage auditing and security log
       SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege  Take ownership of files or other objects
          SeLoadDriverPrivilege  Load and unload device drivers
       SeSystemProfilePrivilege  Profile system performance
          SeSystemtimePrivilege  Change the system time
SeProfileSingleProcessPrivilege  Profile single process
SeIncreaseBasePriorityPrivilege  Increase scheduling priority
      SeCreatePagefilePrivilege  Create a pagefile
     SeCreatePermanentPrivilege  Create permanent shared objects
              SeBackupPrivilege  Back up files and directories
             SeRestorePrivilege  Restore files and directories
            SeShutdownPrivilege  Shut down the system
               SeDebugPrivilege  Debug programs
               SeAuditPrivilege  Generate security audits
   SeSystemEnvironmentPrivilege  Modify firmware environment values
        SeChangeNotifyPrivilege  Bypass traverse checking
      SeRemoteShutdownPrivilege  Force shutdown from a remote system
              SeUndockPrivilege  Remove computer from docking station
           SeSyncAgentPrivilege  Synchronize directory service data
    SeEnableDelegationPrivilege  Enable computer and user accounts to
                                 be trusted for delegation
        SeManageVolumePrivilege  Perform volume maintenance tasks
         SeImpersonatePrivilege  Impersonate a client after authentication
        SeCreateGlobalPrivilege  Create global objects

The Samba Team is implementing only those privileges that are logical and useful in the UNIX/Linux environment. Many of the Windows 200X/XP privileges have no direct equivalence in UNIX.

When a Windows NT4 (or later) client joins a domain, the domain global Domain Admins group is added to the membership of the local Administrators group on the client. Any user who is a member of the domain global Domain Admins group will have administrative rights on the Windows client.

This is often not the most desirable solution because it means that the user will have administrative rights and privileges on domain servers also. The Power Users group on Windows client workstations permits local administration of the workstation alone. Any domain global user or domain global group can be added to the membership of the local workstation group Power Users.

See Nested Group Support for an example of how to add domain users and groups to a local group that is on a Windows workstation. The use of the net command permits this to be done from the Samba server.

Another way this can be done is to log onto the Windows workstation as the user Administrator, then open a cmd shell, then execute:

C:\>  net localgroup administrators /add domain_name\entity

where entity is either a domain user or a domain group account name.