A few swat comments. was:Re: [Samba] Does the SWAT tool come with the Red Hat 8.0 distribution?

[John H Terpstra]

On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, mark wrote:

> Since we seem to be discussing the merits of swat, I'll add my two
> cents.
>
> I don't use swat either, but I did try it and the things about it that I
> think could be improved are:
>
> 1.  Backup the original smb.conf (if any).  While it could be said that
> that is the users job, I was more than slightly irritated that my
> original smb.conf was gone after making changes using swat.  I wouldn't
> think that that would be too hard to implement and the advantage is that
> even if a diff between the original and the new smb.conf weren't
> recognizable, a diff with the output of testparm from the old and new
> would be.

I like this suggestion. Could you specify your dream wishes more clearly
please.

ie: I run SWAT and write the back-up file. Now I run it again and
overwrite the backup file again? Where is the gain then? Do I only back it
up if it does not exist? Then what about subsequent changes I make?
Should it back it up to a file with time and date extensions? If so, homw
many backups should I keep?

Your suggestion perplexees me. I want some consensus on this before I
change anything here.

> 2. Don't have swat bind itself to every available IP address by default.
> That just scares me. I'd much rather have something bind to localhost
> only to start out with and then let me change it if I needed to. I
> understand that this would result in quite a few questions like, "Why
> can't I access swat?", but I still think it's better practice.

But by default, it should be blocked by TCP Wrappers from anything except
127.0.0.1. Where is the problem?

> 3.  The 901 port just sucks.  Pick a cool one like 22 or 25 or 110.
> Well, 110 isn't so cool, but 25, wowza!
>
> mark
>
> ps.  comment 3. was a joke.  I couldn't handle only having two comments.

Now here we agree! Yes!

- John T.
-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht at samba.org