[jcifs] Annoying SMB URL question.

[Michael B. Allen]

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002 05:08:54 -0500
"Glass, Eric" <eric.glass at capitalone.com> wrote:

> Just beating a dead horse -- I would think the escaped-backslash syntax
> (i.e., DOMAIN%5Cuser) would be more consistent, given that
> 
> a) The DOMAIN\user syntax is most widely used by the MS tools
> 
> b) You can already do http://DOMAIN%5Cuser:pass@webhost for NTLM-protected
> content on IIS webservers (not entirely relevant, I know, but maybe
> worthwhile for consistency's sake)

Not even going to discuss these first two arguments.

> c) Selecting ";" simply because it doesn't have to be escaped doesn't really
> buy you anything; to be correct, your applications will still have to be
> able to unescape whatever separator is chosen.  i.e.:

But ';' does not *require* you to use an escape whereas using '\' does
if the URLs are going to travel. You might as well say "lets use '%3b'
as the domain user separator".

> smb://DOMAIN%3Buser:pass@server
> 
> is just as valid as:
> 
> smb://DOMAIN;user:pass@server
> 
> Basically, you still have to be able to do a hex to char conversion to cover
> the possibility that the user simply chose to escape the separator.
> 
> Just my two cents.  On another note (out of curiosity), in my environment we
> have two domains (for example, "DOM1" and "DOM2") which I'm assuming are set
> up with some sort of trust relationship; that is, I can log into box
> "server" which is a member of DOM2 using my account "eric" in DOM1.  How
> would that be represented in a URL, where my user credentials are for an
> account in one domain ("DOM1\eric"), but I am accessing a resource on a
> server which is a member of another domain ("DOM2\server")?

I don't know if the domain that this server is a member of differs from
it's workgroup but if there is any semantic difference I don't know
of any case where that would need to be represented with an SMB URL. A
"server that's a member of a domain" is not an addressable resource.

> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Conrad Minshall [mailto:conrad at apple.com]
> > Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 3:44 PM
> > To: Christopher R. Hertel; Matthew Tippett
> > Cc: jcifs at samba.org
> > Subject: Re: [jcifs] Annoying SMB URL question.
> > 
> > 
> > At 11:54 AM -0600 12/6/02, Christopher R. Hertel wrote:
> > 
> > >>  Which begs the question, if the domain is used for 
> > authentication, why
> > >>  not leave the user field in the userinfo section of the URL as
> > >>
> > >>    DOMAIN%5Cuser
> > >>
> > >>  Since the domain is an integral part of the credentials.
> > >
> > >The application (the client parsing the URL string and 
> > converting it into
> > >SMB calls) needs to parse the NTDomain from the username.  
> > You are right
> > >that we could have chosen to separate the two using an 
> > escaped backslash
> > >or, perhaps an escaped percent sign.  Instead, we found that the
> > >semi-colon did not need to be escaped in the username field 
> > and could be
> > >used as a separator.
> > >
> > >It just seemed easier and more readable to use the semicolon.
> > 
> > Yes.  Having all separators unescaped means I can look at a URL and 
> > ignore escape sequences rather than doing a hex to char on each to 
> > see if it is important. 
> > 
>  
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