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Samba Code Fork Announced 97

Posted by michael from the two-roads-diverged-in-a-wood dept.
Andrew Klaassen writes: "No, it's not just another Samba code branch. It's a much more serious code fork, led by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton and some of the coders who brought PDC functionality to Samba. The announcement was very circumspect about the developer differences which led up to the fork, as is the new project's (currently rather threadbare) Web site."
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Samba Code Fork Announced More

Samba Code Fork Announced

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  • You are without clue. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    security = user

    Do you even know what you're talking about? User level sharing doesn't work with a Samba PDC.

    Try this. From a windows 95 or 98 machine, set up your file sharing as "user-level access" (not share level access). This is supposed to let you share stuff on a user by user basis, not just one password fits all. List the domain name to obtain the user list from and reboot windows. Now try to share anything. Windows barfs saying it "cannot obtain the user list for the domain [DOMAIN NAME]". With a Windows NT PDC, this works.

  • Why not use the command-line FTP client that comes with W2K? Works fine with the Linux FTP server I connect to.

  • This is good. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hi, as one of the main Samba Team members I just want to say
    that this is a really good thing, and will benefit all Samba
    users.

    Luke and Sander have had different goals for the TNG code branch
    for a while, and there was much tension between the TNG branch
    people and the main branch developers about the best way to achieve
    things, and the priority to put on different features.

    Taking the TNG branch and making it into a separate project is an
    *excellent* solution, and I'm *really* glad to see Luke back involved
    with it (he got dissolusioned for a while due to these tensions).

    What it will mean is that both projects will benefit, as the TNG
    project can concentrate on the PDC DCE-RPC call development, and
    the HEAD branch can concentrate on the file/print appliance style
    server development - but we both get to use each others code !

    Sander and Luke are doing exactly the right thing, and I wish
    them all the best with it !

    The next release from the main Samba branch will be Samba 2.2.0,
    which is currently in alpha stage right now.

    Cheers,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.

  • I was hoping they would name the new fork something along the lines of tango (from TNG). Now I see they already have a samba-tng domain :(

    Better luck next time?

    Victor Jalencas
  • First off, does this *look* like a tech support forum to you?

    Second, it serves you damned well right for installing a new system without testing it.

    As for your problem, well, it could be anything. It could be Samba, it could be that you dont have your hardware configured properly under linux. Like I said, anything. If your not competent enough to properly configure a linux samba server then you shouldnt have convinced your company to switch to a linux server when your the only one around who has any hope of even guessing why its broken.

    People like you are the evangilists who give linux a bad name.

    Nick

  • I don't use Samba, so maybe that's why this doesn't make much sense to me - there main point would seem to be that they want w2k support - surely that is high on the main Samba list of objectives anyway?
    Regards,

    Denny

    # Using Linux in the UK? Check out Linux UK [linuxuk.co.uk]

  • Jeez, how embarassing :)

    And only a coupla weeks after I complimented someone on their .sig that pointed out the difference...
    Regards,

    Denny

    # Using Linux in the UK? Check out Linux UK [linuxuk.co.uk]

  • User sharing does work in TNG, but the Win98 support was flaky at best the last time I looked. NT4 works very well with TNG.

    However, I'm confused as to what you are trying to do: if you are trying to set up a Samba PDC, then your security line should say security=domain, and you should read the TNG howtos (linked off the tng website) to see what the current procedure is for setting up the NT accounts on TNG, since it changed several times.
  • I quote from the website:

    "TNG stands for 'The Next Generation'. At the time of writing, Samba TNG will never officially be released. It will be merged into the Stable Samba branch, which will become Samba 3. Samba TNG is not recommended for production use, but once it is working, you shouldn't see too many stability problems. "

    So it's not a fork, it will become Samba 3.0 eventually.
  • Hi,
    That would be the coolest feature: implementing the share privileges/groups. IIRC, neither does this transparently. Also, IIRC, some of the non-free Unix SMB implementations do this (Syntax TAS).

    Oh well...
    Your Working Boy,
  • Is SMBfs related to samba at all? Even sharing developers doesn't mean that SMBfs and SAMBA are related in any mangerial way.
  • lkcl's diary at Advogato [advogato.org] has a few entries regarding the way Samba development has been going, particularly this entry: http://advogato.org/person/l kcl /diary.html?start=67 [advogato.org].
  • My understanding is that TNG exists to provide more than a working PDC implementation -- They want to provide a full implementation of Microsoft RPC (which as someone pointed out to me earlier is compatible with Open Group DCE/RPC).

    Having MS RPC emulation would be a big step because it would potentially allow people to do things like build Exchange server or DCOM clones. (However, Microsoft is moving away from MS-RPC and towards SOAP, so perhaps it's not necessary in the long run.)
    --
  • I've got a Win2000 box, as well as a Linux one and OpenBSD one. Now, the Linux and OpenBSD boxes can access each other fine with Samba. When the Win2000 box used to run Win98, it too talked niced with the others.

    Now, however, the Win2000 box can see the others through Network Neigborhood. It just times out everytime it tries to access them.

    I would love anything that could help me with this problem!

  • >The GPL prevents code forks.

    The GPL dosn't prevent forks... for the most part it encurages them.

    Your required to relase code changes when you release a binary.. Zap! A new fork...
    It accually dosn't become a fork unless people keep maintainning it.
    What usually happends to all those Linux patches is they end up in the main kernel..

    The GPL encurages forks.. the community encurages murging and in the end forks happen a lot.. we just don't see it...

  • No, it works with any service pack for 4. The only difference I know of is that after SP4, NT4 by default used encrypted passwords.

  • One small correction, samba has been able to act as an NT4.0 PDC for a loooong time, ever since the first 2.0 release. it's not a complete replacement, but I've been using it for over a year to handle logins for NT4 workstations and shares.
  • I see, and since the NT machine asks for a password anyway is seems reasonable that a normal user should be able to request the mount.

    >Guess i have to go read the code.

    And maybe fix it and issue a patch :)
  • I agree that smbmount is very useful - it's the part of Samba that I get the most use out of. Why would you want to run it as non root though?
  • So i'm not sure whether or not IIS can be run on Win2k Pro, BFD.

    And if I'm guilty of assault, sue me, douche-bag.

    Freakin' MS Whore.
  • Have you forgotten that IIS is only allowed to run on NT4 Server (not workstation) and I'm pretty sure that it can't be run on Win2k Professional. Not to mention the fact that it can't be run on win95/98/ME, etc.

    Also, don't get me started on the licensing requirement in NT4 WS, where you are not allowed to have more than 10 concurrent tcp/ip connections meaning that you can basically *never* install Netscape web server/apache/(insert favorite http server here) on Workstation.

    Someone over at MS needs their heads caved in with a crowbar for this particular licensing greediness designed to force people to buy the much more expensive NT4 Server.

  • This is not a support forum, and if you weren't an anononymous coward, i'd personally mail you, but have you tried suid'ing the smbmount & smbumount binaries?
  • Hi, I figure this is a pretty basic question, but I looked around and couldn't find an answer in any of the samba FAQ's.

    Whenever my win2k client tries to read() more than 4K at a time from the samba share on my redhat 6.3 linux box, the performace drops by about 20 times!

    The same operation works fine reading from another win2k share.

    I read the docs, and tried playing around with the xfersize (I forget the exact name) parameters in the smb.conf, but nothing seems to work.

    I work for a small software developer, and all the other programmers are 100% windows guys. I had to convince them that using a linux box for our company's server would be a better choice in the long run than using windows. Now everyone is bitching at me about how we should just reformat the linux box and install win2k server. If I can't figure this out quickly, I'm gonna have to!

    thanks!

  • "First off, does this *look* like a tech support forum to you?"

    Like I said, I couldn't find the answer on the samba site, so i figured if there's a bunch of samba pros reading this discussion, they might just know off the top of their heads.

    "Second, it serves you damned well right for installing a new system without testing it."

    How do you test something without installling it?

    "As for your problem, well, it could be anything. It could be Samba, it could be that you dont have your hardware configured properly under linux. Like I said, anything."

    Yeah. Could be. Could be obvious too, that's why I asked.

    "If your not competent enough to properly configure a linux samba server then you shouldnt have convinced your company to switch to a linux server when your the only one around who has any hope of even guessing why its broken."

    Hard to tell if I'm competent to install it until AFTER I try, isn't it? The thing runs, it just runs real slow!

    "People like you are the evangilists who give linux a bad name."

    Back at ya!

  • Sorry. Meant 6.2. I don't suppose that's gonna be the magical difference that helps you answer my question though. :)
  • Just browsing somewhat futher in the mailinglist, I found this [samba.org] stating that win2k PDC was on its way in the HEAD branch. Btw as a answer to above mentioning (like you need to have a FTP server running the get files across win2k linux), nothing less is true, just disable active directory (or whatever it is called) and it does work!
  • Well, it's the only FAQ that seems to exist at the referenced Samba-TNG web site.
  • It may indeed be wrong, but it's what the FAQ on the Samba-TNG website says. Can you blame anyone for being confused?
  • ... and there was a patch for HEAD and the soon-to-be-released 2.2, so that WIN2k can join a samba-domain. (of course a PDC can do more than that ;)


    Samba Information HQ
  • For a while you could run TNG and HEAD together .. smbd from HEAD, rest from TNG ... did not try it for some time...

    Best way today is to create a second interface (like eth0:1) and bind both Samba-versions to different interfaces ...
    (eth0 would be HEAD/2.2 and eth0:1 would be tng)

    so you could use a good PDC and a good fileserver on the same machine ....

    regards,
    Michael


    Samba Information HQ
  • Has anyone considered whether, as an obsfucated (ie. encripted) protocol, that the reverse engineering required for SAMBA development may be considered in breach of the DMCA?
  • In that case, how much of a fork is this really? Can the PDC people write their PDC-related code, then just add the basic smb, etc that samba provides to come up with a total Why2K functional replacement or are they going to have to rewrite it? In either case it seems like they have very different goals, and being seperate is a good idea, but it would be nice if the PDC group can re-use nearly all the samba code. Otherwise they've taken on a project that all the resources of Bill Gates can't seem to get right.
  • I-I-I-I want the knife ---- Eddie Murphy ( Golden Child )

  • Full-blown Windows 2000 networking (i.e. not old-style Win9x) with Active Directory and such is designed to require MS Win2K servers. While based on standards like LDAP, Kerberos and Dynamic DNS Microsoft "cleverly" modified those protocols so that they cannot be provided by standard Unix based servers, but instead must be provided by M$ W2K servers. Furthermore, these M$ W2K servers *will* serve standard LDAP, Kerberos and Dynamics DNS clients.

    The result is that if you have W2K and UNIX on the same network, you're almost forced use W2K platforms to provide these network services. Presto - by corrupting standards M$ has made themselves the network server platform of choice.

    I'd be ecstatic if we could provide these "necessary" W2K services from an open platform. Hopefully Samba or something else will provide this soon.

  • Yeah... I thought forks occurred when a project wanted to go to different places... This one just seems to be that they want to take a different route to the same place, and perhaps go at a different speed...

    Is classic Samba wholly opposed to supporting printing and w2k or something? Why can't these things be part of classic Samba?

    Oh, and... TNG? I dunno, kids...
  • LKCL is also involved in open-it.org's project goals, which hopes to address the ActiveDirectory, Kerberos, and possibly the DDNS components of the equation. However, we'd like to design a better AD, not just be another AD that nips at the heels of MS.

  • I can't get the Win2K/IE 5.5 "FTP Explorer" to work with Linux (doesn't take password and there's no fucking logs to debug courtesy of Microsoft

    If you are trying to use MS IE to FTP to another site that requires anything but anonymous access, simply type in the Address bar:

    ftp://username:password@ftp.address

    It's far from secure, since your plaintext password is just sitting on your monitor for all to see, but it works when you're at the office late at night and you need to quickly get to the ftp site.

  • Is that the new Samba-TNG FAQ? It sounds very much like the old (pre-fork) Samba-TNG FAQ. At that point Samba-TNG was actually SAMBA_TNG, a checkout marker from the main Samba CVS server, and it was to become the next version of Samba. This appears that the new (post-fork) Samba-TNG crew checked out that branch and are starting their own project based upon it.
  • Is that the new Samba-TNG FAQ? It sounds very much like the old (pre-fork) Samba-TNG FAQ. At that point Samba-TNG was actually SAMBA_TNG, a checkout marker from the main Samba CVS server, and it was to become the next version of Samba. This appears that the new (post-fork) Samba-TNG crew checked out that branch and are starting their own project based upon it.

  • I know, I'm getting redundant with this post but:

    Is that the new Samba-TNG FAQ? It sounds very much like the old (pre-fork) Samba-TNG FAQ. At that point Samba-TNG was actually SAMBA_TNG, a checkout marker from the main Samba CVS server, and it was to become the next version of Samba. This appears that the new (post-fork) Samba-TNG crew checked out that branch and are starting their own project based upon it.

  • So, where's the Samba Code spoon and the Samba Code knife? I want the entire Samba Code stainless steel flatware set!

    I'm waiting for the Samba Code splade [householdchina.on.ca] - I prefer an integrated solution.
  • it has to do with the kerberos 5 authentification dat windoze 2k uses. Turn off encrypted passwords in the registry. That does the trick.
  • Woah. Message from a parallel universe? There is no Red Hat 6.3 in my universe.

    WireHead
  • just put
    -ouid=[whatever user]
    and the user will have the ownership of the mountpoint after it is mounted, or
    -oumask=[mask]
    to change the default mask (744, if I remember right)

  • I just want to see results. It's too bad that the best of TNG and the best of HEAD never got merged back into one tree. I would have prefered it that way. As it stands, TNG is the best PDC code, and HEAD is the best \\server\file code (in other words, just plain file serving). Since I'm not willing to go with the instability of TNG, I'm forced to run an NT PDC server (just to do WinNT and Win2k logons), but all the drives are mapped to the Samba server (2.0.7, or HEAD code). It's yucky.

    I hope soon we can see some results from this. Such as some stable TNG code. Or maybe some feature-ful HEAD code. But it's not my position to whine--I haven't written any Samba code, so I'm part of the problem instead of the solution.
    If only I had time to code...
  • I checked out the FAQ [kneschke.de] on the samba-tng site and I found something to be of interest:

    What is Samba TNG?

    TNG stands for 'The Next Generation'. At the time of writing, Samba TNG will never officially be released. It will be merged into the Stable Samba branch, which will become Samba 3. Samba TNG is not recommended for production use, but once it is working, you shouldn't see too many stability problems.

    So, uh what's the big deal? If this code is just going to be merged into samba 3, then I'm not certain why this is relevant...besides the fact that having full w2k domain support under *nix is pretty cool for anyone who has to operate in a cross platform environment (most of us).

    Jon
  • Am I the only one that runs into many problems with filesharing using Win2K? I have problems all the time: users that connect from Win98/95/ME have to enter passwords while I did not set any (yes, I do have the guest-account enabled, screw security!)

    The real annoyance here, IMO, is that a Win9x box can only (without additional software) supply you with one user context at a time. Annoyingly enough, even if you are not in a domain, if you have the right username and password, you can sometimes access things in a domain without specifically logging into the domain.

    Does anyone remember what the piece of software is that lets you access different shares as different users?

  • You guys don't seem to get, do you? The Samba team got so obsessed with MS simulation, they started thinking DoJ is out to get them too. It was long feared that DoJ wanted to separate the PDC and FS part of the team for the obvious illegal stranglehold they enjoyed on the Samba market together.
    They simply pre-empted the split. After all, their only desire is to innovate and enrich the user's experience.

    This sarcastic parody brought to you by the Guy Who Gave Up Caffeine(TM).



    -----
  • Then you're doing it wrong.

    andyh@server:~# smbclient //wiffle/downloads -U Administrator
    added interface ip=192.168.1.100 bcast=192.168.1.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
    Password:
    Domain=[INTRANET] OS=[Windows 5.0] Server=[Windows 2000 LAN Manager]
    smb: \> ls
    . D 0 Thu Jul 20 23:40:12 2000
    .. D 0 Thu Jul 20 23:40:12 2000
    downloads.log A 524288 Sat Oct 14 14:38:08 2000
    Looks like it works to me!
  • It sounds like you have something wrong with the configuration. I use a RedHat 6.2 box that mounts Win2k AS shares just fine. Instead of the smbclient command, try this:
    #mount -t smbfs -o username=administrator //server/share /some/mount/point
    Make sure you have generated the smbpasswd file on the Linux side (consult the Samba documentation).

    Enigma
    .sigless


    Enigma
  • Do all samba people have an attitude problem?

    Any slas discusion on a technicalish subject - people post questions - people who can help post suggestions

    Gcc,perl,python ad infitum

    No-one else seems to have a problem with it

    Especally as the last time I tried posting to the main samba newsgroups I got "posting is not allowed"

  • this is obviously a ploy by microsoft to ruin file sharing for non-ms platforms. (i'm kidding :P)
  • i've got a fix for that... back up all necessary files, format your hardrive and install anything other than win2k
  • Activate: Pre-Win2k users, and Anonymous logon. Then they should be able to get in w/o a password.
  • I'm pretty sure that...
    There's a wonderful tool for doing research such as this. It's called the Internet.

    Try this: Enter "http://www.google.com" into your Web browser.

    I will refrain from calling for violence, even though you are guilty of assault against Microsoft employees. (Look it up, jackass.)
  • "Hard to tell if I'm competent to install it until AFTER I try, isn't it? "

    One clue about competence, you shouldn't pitch an untested idea and do your first install on you main file servere.

  • Defensive little ba*tard, ain't you. Un-informed to..

    IIS4 runs on NT4 server ,NT4 Workstation, and Win9X as part of the NT4 Option Kit install. The Wrk/Win9x call them selves Personal Web Server (PWS) amd have the 10 user limit you decry. (9X is missing other stuff also).

    Win2K ships with IIS5 in all varients. Same IIS/PWS limits as before. IIS4 will not install on a Win2K box.

    It's the same software, one liscened to >10 users (server) one liscened to 10 (Workstation). Your bitch is aout not being able to use a personal/devloper sized (and priced) system and support production sized connections with out paying for it. Basicly your a frustrated, clueless would-be thief.
  • >A major rewrite _IS_ good thing
    >in programming generally.

    Oh, I completely agree, but don't let Joel hear you say that.

  • The Masons vs The Lizard People
  • You ought to see the kind of (and how MUCH) rubbish people send around our office.
    --
  • Two things:

    1:I could understand the old system that MS had for the network layout, what's this new one like, is it taking on a similar concept to the Novell/Tree idea?.

    2: I tried to set samba up once, but my girlfriend got bored of me messing around with it. and i wasn't allowed to touch it again.
    --
  • we need this like we need a hole in the head. Yet another camp of developers who can't/haven't learned to play well with others. "I'm taking my marbles and going home, bwaaahhh." Open source seems to be a great forum for encouraging childish behavior.

  • NT uses full ACLs while Samba is written to the lowest common denomiter (SP?), or true Unix permissions which are a 3 part ACL only (user, group, all). This causes problems between the mapping.

    When I was subscribed to the Samba list, there was talk about how to go about it.

    --
    Ben Kosse

  • So will samba be able to support Microsoft's bastardized Kerberos? What about Active Directory? Also, how does the "release" of MS Kerberos specs affect the development?
    Oh, and is it possible to run samba as a non-PDC server within Active Directory network? (that is right now)
    ___
  • >buy an FTP server package for Windows just to get a few files across.

    That's FUD [unintentional?].

    You don't need to "buy" an FTP server to get files across Win2k and Linux -- the free FTP server included in IIS is just fine, and I'm sure there's GPL stuff that's been ported also.

    Aside from that, you can always ssh into the Linux box, and ftp files in the OTHER direction.

    But why do anything? The FTP server in Linux works fine. I can't get the Win2K/IE 5.5 "FTP Explorer" to work with Linux (doesn't take password and there's no fucking logs to debug courtesy of Microsoft)... but WS-FTP works fine.

    I use Win2k on one box, Linux on another at home. I've yet to get Samba working, though it's been more laziness than anything.
  • But what hasn't developed is a derivitive "Stanix" or "Davix" "Tomix", where someone else is in charge of the entire source tree.

    That would be "Tomix", "Dickix", or "Harrix"...:)

  • But, IMHO, Samba and the SMB protocol are a good example of a Bad but neccesary thing. Let me get this clear: "SAMBA IS GOOD, Samba let's you have a UNIX file/print server in a private network full of Windows machines. But the PROTOCOL is BAD. The extensions that have been added to the original protocol by M$ have made it a nightmare. I think that's why the Samba project is forking. But again, this is only MHO. Thanks to the samba guys anyway (both), who have been delivering a quality product from a lousy standard....

  • Re:ms? (Score:2)

    by Idaho ( 12907 )
    Ruin filesharing? They've already done that, and not only for non-ms platforms!

    Am I the only one that runs into many problems with filesharing using Win2K? I have problems all the time: users that connect from Win98/95/ME have to enter passwords while I did not set any (yes, I do have the guest-account enabled, screw security!)

    Then, sometimes it works without a password, then it asks for a not-existing password, then it does not work at all.

    Since I put Linux+samba in between to do all this stuff I haven't had any problems whatsoever.

    So, am I the only one experiencing this kind of problem?

    (I know this is a bit - or actually a lot - offtopic - sorry about that!)
  • Two focussed projects can be managed more effectively and can produce results faster than a single project that wants to be everything to everybody. So, when it happens for technical reasons, forking a project can be quite rational. Besides, the two projects can still share and exchange a lot of code--it just requires a little more hacking.
  • Um I hate to burst your bubble, but the Redhat kernel and SuSE kernels are 'forks'. They not only have patches applied to them, but have code that is NOT in the main kernel. Redhat & SuSE DO maintian these kernels. Just because they are not 'officially' announced as forks does not mean that they are not forks. I'll take Redhat as an example. In Redhat 6.0 (I think it was) they shipped a 2.2.5 kernel that I could not patch to 2.2.6 because it was so different. This is a fork as the code is that different from the main branch. They just don't announce it as different.

    On another "official' fork. Take Mozilla. They officially anounced that Mozilla would fork. There would be netscape 6 and Mozilla. At some point they would come back together again. If you get Netscape 6 and Mozilla they are different ever so slightly. Netscape is focusing on stability and speed and targeting towards a release that AOL can ship with there software. There focus is more on the Windows / MAC side as that is where AOL software runs. Mozilla is also focusing on this but they are focusing on Linux (read there pages this is true test the software). I have both Netscape 6pre 3 and Mozilla 18. They are ever so slightly differnt with an end goal that the two will someday merge back to one.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!


  • There were two main branches in the samba group. These guys wanted samba to be a complete replacement for Windows NT/2000. The other group just wanted samba to be able to interact with a windows network and felt that if you wanted a Windows PDC, you should get a windows machine. I was hoping this stuff would work itself out, but it sounds like the two groups could not agree on the future of samba so they split. The PDC folks are a minority anyway, so they broke off. The Samba folks want win2k support and it works anyway, but they don't want to support all the functionality of a win2k server, whereas the TNG group did.
  • The original idea was that SAMBA TNG was the development branch. As parts became stable, they were to be merged into the main branch. It looks instead like they'll try to turn the development branch into a stable branch.

    But nothing says that the main SAMBA branch team can't merge parts of TNG into the the main branch, like the BSDs who sometimes use each others' code.

  • Order the pizza. Ask for a second box. When it arrives, take half the pizza and put it in the second box. Mail both.

    Okay, it's not as easy as sending a voucher, but it's equally fair to both code parties...

  • I think it is a bit strange to characterise what Redhat and SuSE do as
    forking the kernel. It would be more accurate to say that they
    maintain a set of patches to the kernel that they keep updated and
    apply to each new release (which is something many kernel developers
    do on their own anyway). What they don't do set up an alternative
    linux-kernel development community that duplicates the work of the
    main development effort, which is what is commonly undetsood by a fork.

  • If we end up being able to run smbd from the main samba project for our file sharing, and the TNG PDC stuff for user/machine authentication simultaneously, then this will be a win. If it's all-or-nothing with either project, then we lose.

    Of course it should always be possible to run samba with security=server pointing at a TNG server. I'd just like to be sure I can run both on the same box.

    "Even if you are on the right track, you'll
    get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers

  • It sounds like setting up a IP alias would be the only hassle, then just setup Samba to listen on one and Samba-TNG to listen on the other. (Remember they both listen on the same netbios ports).

    It could end up being quite a win-win situation.
  • TNG is much more about RPC than about filesharing ....

    with TNG you can add users to your smbpasswd whith the NT 4.0 usrmgr.exe .... there is an remote smbstatus for srvmgr.exe, and many more things planned ....


    Samba Information HQ
  • nah, security=domain is used when you authenticate your users against *another* pdc...

    if your are doing your own pdc, you should use security=user

    check http://bioserve.latrobe.edu.au/samba/ for very nice info about samba 2.0.7 (latest stable, does not work as pdc with wni2k)as pdc

    check http://www.kneschke.de/projekte/samba_tng/index.ph p3 for howtos about samba-tng

  • Only, if I recall correctly, if it's NT4 PRE SERVICE PACK 4. Not NT4 SP6a, and not Win2K Professional.
  • Having PDC/BDC functionality is a very useful thing - are there no plans to merge it into the main codebase?
  • If you care to read on through the link in the announcement, you'd find the following in the SAMBA-TNG FAQ:
    TNG stands for 'The Next Generation'. At the time of writing, Samba TNG will never officially be released. It will be merged into the Stable Samba branch, which will become Samba 3. Samba TNG is not recommended for production use, but once it is working, you shouldn't see too many stability problems.
    ... which sounds a lot more like a development side bar than a fork...
  • there main point would seem to be that they want w2k support - surely that is high on the main Samba list of objectives anyway?
    Samba already works with Windows 2000 though... I've got three drives mapped on Windows 2000 to shares on my Linux box right in front of me.

    I have directories mounted using smbfs on my Linux box from shares on my Windows 2000 box.

    So, what's missing?
  • Actually IE (and I think netscape does this as well) will let you enter your password seperately.

    Just use ftp://user@site.com and enter the password when it prompts. After you quit every instance of IE or NS the address will remain in the history, however it should forget your password.

    Fist Prost

    "We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
  • It works, but partically, if you just want to map a couple of drives over, it works ok, mainly because Win2K is running in compatability mode.

    However, they want to Samba to include PDC (Primary Domain Controller) support, and ActiveDirectory (LDAP based) support, with full support for kerbreos, access controls, SDP support etc.

    MS also have a 'internet file system' standard to replace SMB, they've made the standard publicaclly available apparenltly :/

  • where does smbmount fit into this? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14, 2000 @06:34AM (#706123)

    i dont know about anyone else here, but I always found smbmount to be the most obvious SMB client on Linux, since it allows you to map a windows drive just as any other mounted device. Whereas smbclient always seemed like a very clumsy tool that can't easily be integrated with other console/X apps (or maybe im wrong here, feel free to point something out to me).

    Anyway the samba site has said for quite a long time:

    "Up until recently smbfs has not been maintained as nobody in the Samba Team used it. This has now changed, and Andrew Tridgell tridge@linuxcare.com has taken over maintainence. ".
    Which would be fine if Andrew Tridgell answered any emails about it, such as the problems I'm having getting it to work as anything other than root (and its *not* the RTFM solution in the man page, tried it, been there, done that, still doesnt work).

    So does anyone care about being able to talk to a windows machine just like any other mounted device?

  • I'm concerned... What about Pizza? (Score:3)

    by Eg0r ( 704 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @09:06AM (#706124)
    Do you remember the bit in the samba documentation, about samba being "pizzaware" [samba.org] ? Who am I supposed to send the pizzas to, now that the project has forked? :-)

    Those who have registered in the Samba survey as "Pizza Factory" will already know this, but the rest may need some help. Andrew doesn't ask for payment, but he does appreciate it when people give him pizza. This calls for a little organisation when the pizza donor is twenty thousand kilometres away, but it has been done.
    mmhhh.. pizza, forks... I'm hungry :-)

    ---

  • Re:It has to be posted sometime. (Score:3)

    by Mignon ( 34109 ) <satan@programmer.net> on Saturday October 14, 2000 @07:01AM (#706125)
    There is no spoon. -- Neo

  • Different goals (Score:3)

    by MikeBabcock ( 65886 ) <mtb-slashdot@mikebabcock.ca> on Saturday October 14, 2000 @06:25AM (#706126) Homepage Journal
    A lot of people have wanted to go very different places with Samba, and have had different visions of how to get there.

    I just wish that everyone could resolve their differences through modularisation of the code so that desired features can be compiled in or not. Some of these require rewrites, or different handling, but many can often be done in a complimentary manner.

  • Re:I don't get it... (Score:3)

    by mostrows ( 78792 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @06:58AM (#706127)
    W2K PDC functionality, which is what you get with Samba TNG lets you create accounts on your Linux box which are recognized by the W2K machines in your domain. So, the big thing here is that if you have x W2K boxes you don't need to go to each one to add a user. With a Samba TNG PDC the W2K machines will look to it to get account information.

    Without a Samba-based PDC you've got to get NT Server, or go to each W2K machine and add acounts, both of which are major PITAs.

  • What one sees watching the development lists (Score:3)

    by Cerlyn ( 202990 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @10:38AM (#706128)

    Now I am not a Samba member, but I watch several of the development lists. Here is my take of the situation.

    As far as I can tell, Samba TNG's goal was an attempt to fake being an NT server at the expense of everything else. The sole reason for TNG's existence (at least while I monitored the lists) was to provide a reference implementation of the NT server calls that could be backported into the main Samba development branch. And indeed, many things were broken (password changing, good file sharing with 95/98 machines, etc.) in the attempt to get the NT calls working. This was fine, since it was not intended to be widely used.

    Unfortunately, many people on the Samba lists implemented Samba TNG as if it were finalized code. They wanted the Win2k domain controller support *before* Samba was ready to provide a stable implementation of it, often complaining (loudly) about this as if it was Samba's sole goal. But the core Samba team was taking its time working on this subject. The Samba TNG staff also had a different working style than the main Samba team. These and other facts (Samba TNG uses about seven daemons, while the current stable samba uses two, etc.) helped lead to this code fork.

    In other news (as those of us watching samba-cvs already know), enough support so win2k can join an NT 4 style samba-controlled domain was just put in the CVS tree for samba 2.2 this past week. If you're looking for that, checkout a copy of that, but note it is *alpha* (not even beta) software right now.

  • It has to be posted sometime. (Score:3)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @06:22AM (#706129)
    So, where's the Samba Code spoon and the Samba Code knife? I want the entire Samba Code stainless steel flatware set!

  • Patches aren't quite forks. . . (Score:4)

    by Webmonger ( 24302 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @07:00AM (#706130) Homepage
    It's true that there are many different patches around, and custom kernels with major distributions.

    But what hasn't developed is a derivitive "Stanix" or "Davix" "Tomix", where someone else is in charge of the entire source tree.

    When a fork happens, someone new assumes responsibility for the entire tree. They don't pay very much attention to the other branch.

    But patches are just improvements is specific areas. They acknowledge the main branch as essentially good, but lacking in one respect or another, and fix just that aspect. Most of the good patches will join the main branch at some point.

    So yeah, there's a lot of variation out there. But it's not quite forking.

  • Re:I don't get it... (Score:4)

    by tinla ( 120858 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @06:26AM (#706131) Homepage Journal
    Samba works fine with W2k, I use it every day. Lots of users, lots of drive maps. You can have account mappings and shared directories and everything you may like.

    The thing they want to get sorted is that we still need a W2K Domain Controller. Samba can't do the job so you can't have an all Linux network server and appear to be beating MS's drum in terms of network structure. I least thats they way I read it last time I checked the FAQs, but I'm no SMB pro.

    I've got a P166 to do ALL the file serving and a P333 just to control the domain. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

  • welcome to open source (Score:5)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @06:41AM (#706132) Journal
    The nice thing about open source is that this can happen and is allowed to happen. So what! Chances are that at some point one side may realize that the other was right and they may merge again, or that adding the new functionality is a good thing and that it should be merged back into the main branch. I am sure that someone will see the benifit of adding full w2k support in samba as a good thing. While maybe it should not be the focus of the whole project it is good that they are doing this.

    Hey I wrote a program, and I got so many requests by others for this and that to be added in and I added osme of the features in like reading data from a pipe into the editor. Some submitted a patch some did not. In the end some people asked me permision to start there own projects using my code to add this or that functionality and I said that it was fine. As long as there are no hard feelings between the two groups of the samba projectS.

    Hey if you look at the Linux kernel there are already so many forks in it. Redhat and SuSe send out there own version of the kernel with there own special patches already applied to them. There are patches all over the place that allow you to customize the kernel and add features that are not part of the main distribution. Has that hurt Linux? NO it has actually helped as now the code gets tested more. It is a good thing. Althought there is not an announced fork in the Linux kernel they exists. Hey not to long ago there was an article about some compnay who was offering a patch that made Linux perform better for RT video and gaming.

    Hey forks happen!

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • Samba vs TNG, why the fork. (Score:5)

    by Vox ( 32161 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @08:07AM (#706133) Homepage
    I am not involved in the samba/tng projects in any way, except as a user, but I've been following the project sort-of closely for a good while, and here's how things about this fork look like.

    First, TNG was *not* the devel branch of samba, it was a parallel branch to the HEAD (aka main) branch of samba. TNG's objective has always been to create a Primary Domain Controller with full WindowsNT4.0 functionality. HEAD's objective has never been stated as to haveing a PDC...it's for a file/print share server, nothing else.

    Samba has been able to authenticate win9x clients for a while, but if you have an NT worktsation, you need to have an NT server to authenticate your domain, because samba won't listen to it.

    Luke and other samba developers have been working on TNG for a good while (as long as I have been following samba) with the goal of creating a Samba PDC that you can't distinguish from an NT4.0 PDC.

    There has always been some tension between Luke/the TNG team and the main Samba team, because of technical and phylosophical matters, that came to a conclussion about a month ago, when Luke decided to drop out of the Samba team and, aparently, drop TNG.

    Now, Luke and the other TNG people have decided not to drop TNG, but fork it off samba.

    As a user/administrator of samba boxes, I believe this is one of those forks that will end up in the Good Thing list....why?

    Samba is a great file/print shareing server, fast and reliable (as fast and reliable as the very broken and ugly SMB protocol can be), and the samba team focuses on that, and they do it well.

    TNG's objective is, for all purposes, different and broader...they want to create a Primary Domain Controller That Doesn't Suck, that is...a *nix based PDC, and that, in my view, is a Good Thing.

    They travell the same paths, because file/print shareing and PDCs use the SMB protocol to accomplish their job in a mixed enviroment...but they have never really been the same thing...and I see this fork as a Good Thing.

    If you really want all the info on this, read up on the archives for the samba mailing lists, or the Kernel Cousin - Samba archives that Linuxcare puts out every week, you'll be able to understand what's going on better.

    Vox, who knows good things will come out from Samba and TNG.
  • I think anyone who has followed the development of the samba project over the past few years, even at a distance, can understand this fork. samba, as a project, is necessarily somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, the primary reason is to "emulate" file and print services provided by the microsoft platform. On the other hand, i think that the developers would like to provide an independently valuable server platform.

    But samba, as a project, has not quickly been able to adapt new funcitonality provided by microsoft. encrypted passwords and PDC functionality are good example.

    People in the open-source community are rightfully jittery about forks, but I think that this one could make sense. On the one hand, we get the main samba project persuing the goal of just having a great file sharing server platform. On the other hand, we have a lighter-weight project with the specific goal of just acheiving W2K full interoperability. I think this could be cool.

  • Samba Team member view on the SAMBA TNG project (Score:5)

    by jerrycarter ( 243675 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @08:27AM (#706135)
    When a source code tree forks, there can very easily be misunderstanding and speculations about why the fork occurred and what will happen next.

    Luke leighton is a very good friend of mine. He was the Samba team member who helped get me involved with Samba. He still is a very good friend of course. :)

    I have talked about this with Sander Striker and some of the others as well. It is important that the goal of the Samba TNG (as stated in the source code fork announcement) is to use the existing TNG code base for a portable dce/rpc library as well as other RPC implementations / research.

    So this begs the question, what will happen now?

    We all hope to be able to learn from and share ideas/code/jokes with each other. Hopes are that this will free up Luke and others to focus solely of the MS RPC implementation in Windows NT/2000. Samba itself will greatly benefit by being able to take advantage of the effort exerted by the TNG developers. In return, the TNG project will hopefully benefit just as much from the code review process of implementing these same RPCs in Samba. (developers often say it takes 3 - 4 four implementations to get something right :) )

    IMO (although I hate code forks as much as anyone), this was a good move for both Samba and the TNG project. I will not be surprised to development of both projects accelerate. Of course, this is only speculation, but I base it on the fact that we all can pursue each projects goals without being held back by trying to be portable to both code trees. This became alomost impossible even before TNG became a separate GPL'd project.

    If you are interested in finding out more, I encourage you to view Samba's development roadmap at http://www.samba.org/samba/development.html (choose your local morror site please) and the Samba TNG pages at http://www.samba-tng.org/

    Cheers, jerry
    SAMBA Team

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