[Bug 137656] Re: Samba Backport Urgently Needed

[rvjcallanan]

Please Soren, I know you probably work your ass off on this stuff, but try not to be so precious.
I am just a humble infrastructure guy trying to make things *actually work*. My lack of expertise regarding what goes on in your domain should not in any way detract from my basic requirement that it "should do what it says on the tin".

> To what venom do you refer?

Are you really serious?

> > Can Ubuntu do to Samba what it did to Debian???
> 
> What would that be?

Eh, a fork??? Ubuntu SBS? Copyright Jim Shanks

Look, all joking aside, I've had a night's sleep to get things in
perspective...after many sleepless nights...You all know what I mean.

I know that this is probably not the forum for a more general discussion
but anyone reading this thread probably needs to get the whole story as
my negative comments and resultant defensive postures may frighten off
people if taken in isolation. I think this story is worth telling
because many many other people have had similar experiences.

I took out a subscription to various Linux mags a couple of years ago to
watch developments from a safe distance and try to get a good picture
about what was going on. My intial impressions of the community effort
were positive, however, I could see many potential fault lines. I used
the term "Hack Fest" earlier on in this thread and that just about sums
up my feeling at this stage. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't
have it's own structural problems which are reflected in products that
have marketing written all over them and are generally over-the-top and
"too bloody clever by half".

Having become sick of the patronising approach of Microsoft, I finally
dipped my toes in Open Source using Ubuntu/Samba last summer. I was very
impressed with initial tests, however many many niggly things began to
bite once I started installing production systems. Undoubtedly many of
these problems stemmed from the whole permissions mapping side of things
and the slight differences between Linux and Windows usage of the
underlying filesystem. Of course, my lack of familiarity with Linux
didn't help but I persisted when many of my friends drew back and took
the easy route...and who can blame them?

But let me add some positives...

As it stands, I am on the *cusp* of implementing a reliable MS Windows
SB Server replacement using *stable* Ubuntu 6.06 LTS/Samba 3.0.22. I
have avoided file system extended attributes. Even though they appear to
be supported by Dapper, it seems that cp, tar and many other files sytem
utilities have little or no extended attribute support...at least the
versions supported by Dapper (if I am wrong, please correct me on this).
Again, I don't want to overide packaging system with latest versions for
all the usual reasons that have been pointed out already on this thread.
By the way, I won't even mention Posix ACLs.

Given these constraints, I decided to use Samba's archive/system/hidden
/read-only mapping to x bits together with the DOS FILEMODE option, I
disabled ACL configuration on the client side (NT ACL SUPPORT = NO) and
control permissions entirely from Linux side. This seems to work
reliably and is almost what I want..the only downside is that attributes
mapping does not work with directories but I can just about live with
that because Samba silently accepts directory attribute changes without
generating an error (with one unfortunate exception). I use roaming
profiles very effectively with XP with all the usual post-SP2 local
group policy tweaks. My Samba configuration mimics an NT PDC and, after
a year of late nights, all seemed to be going quite well.

What prompted my misguided bug report was a strange bug which I
discovered the other day and this was the straw that broke the camel's
back. I visited the Samba site, looked at the change log from 3.0.22 to
3.0.25c, got a severe dose of indigestion but then saw the Enterprise
Samba link to the sound of trumpets...and this all prompted my "bug
report"...surely not unreasonable..if completely misguided. My attitude
was. I'm sick of all these surprises. I want a stable up-to-date Samba
release on my stable Ubuntu distro...but it seems that "never the twain
shall meet".

Late last night, I got to the nub of the bug in question. Ironically,
given all the aggravation I've been having on this thread, a  cursory
search of the Samba bug list showed that it may not yet have been
reported or fixed which makes me wonder why no-one ever spotted it
before. I have therefore filed an official bug report
https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4956 and, if it gets fixed by
Samba, I will be a good Ubuntu citizen and put in a request to Ubuntu to
have it back-ported. Given the excellent relations we have already built
up on this thread, you will then agree to my request and my state of
Samba Nirvana will be complete (famous last words!). As quid-pro-quo, I
will then publish my Ubuntu SBS setup on the Ubuntu forum and hopefully
save many others from similar aggravation.

*I hope this rounds off this discussion in a rounded way*

> Is anyone else interested in this?  I'm not a coder (used to 
> be, but got
> out of it a looong time ago)  but I have had success in 
> making it work,
> and would be interested in sharing experiences, scripts, config files
> and any other info as well as documentation.
> 

Jim, count me in but I think I've outstayed my welcome here so let's
move to a new thread on the forum.

> I would also like to note that Ubuntu Desktop is the best 
> *NIX that I've
> used to connect to a Linux/Samba server.  I works great.  A 
> file server
> distribution would be a fantastic addition to the Ubuntu 
> experience and
> once again like the easy-to-use desktop, Ubuntu can be first.
> 

Couldn't agree more, however, for my business clients, the server is
where it is all happening. I have stuck my neck out and moved my clients
to Firefix/Thunderbird/OpenOffice but running on Windows XP. I will only
move to desktop Linux when hardware support is much better and windows
emulation is totally seamless. The whole licensing issue also needs to
be sorted (vis-a-vis XP OEM license transfer to virtual machine)

-- 
Samba Backport Urgently Needed
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/137656
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