[cifs-protocol] [REG: 110042518962417] RE: MS-DFSC potential incoherent documentation

[Edgar Olougouna]

Hello Matthieu,

Thanks for your request for clarification on the MS-DFSC document. I created case number 110042518962417 for this request. One of my colleagues will take ownership and will contact you soon.

Best regards,
Edgar

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthieu Patou [mailto:mat+Informatique.Samba at matws.net] 
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 12:22 PM
To: Interoperability Documentation Help; cifs-protocol at samba.org
Subject: MS-DFSC potential incoherent documentation

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.