[cifs-protocol] MS-DFSC potential incoherent documentation

Matthieu Patou mat+Informatique.Samba at matws.net
Sun Apr 25 11:21:56 MDT 2010


Hello Dochelp team,

I've been working on DFS implementation in samba 4

And I found this:
in 3.3.5.3 of MS-DFSC.pdf:


"For a valid domain name, the server MUST return as many complete DC 
names as can fit in the
response buffer. The format of the DC names returned MUST correspond to 
the format of the
domain name in the referral request."

Then a bit later:
"The NumberOfReferrals field MUST be set to 1, independent of the number 
of DC names
     returned."

Then a bit later:

"The server MUST place exactly one referral entry structure in the 
referral response. The server
MUST initialize this referral entry as follows."

The two last parts seems to indicate that only one DC should be returned 
and the first one seems to indicate the opposite.

Also this page:
http://technet.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/cc782417%28WS.10%29.aspx, 
seems to indicate also that the DC referral request can return more than 
1 DC as it's stated:
"The client checks its referral cache for an existing domain-based root 
referral. If this referral is in the cache, the client proceeds to step 
6. If no domain-based root referral exists in the referral cache, the 
client connects to the IPC$ shared folder of the active domain 
controller in the context of the LocalSystem account and requests a 
domain-based root referral. The domain controller determines the clients 
site and returns a list of root targets. By default, the root targets in 
the clients site are at the top of the list, followed by the remaining 
root targets in random order. If least-expensive target selection is 
enabled, the remaining root targets are ordered by lowest cost. If 
same-site target selection is enabled, only root servers in the clients 
site are listed in the referral."


Can you tells us what is right ? or maybe I'm reading the documentation 
in the wrong way.

Regards.
Matthieu.




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