[jcifs] SMB URL and Active Directory.

[Christopher R. Hertel]

Regarding the SMB URL in an Active Directory environment, with port 445 in 
use for SMB services...

- I can't think of a meaning for "smb://" in this context.  Does anyone
  have a suggestion (that doesn't require some sort of pre-configured
  default)?  In an NBT context, it means "search the local LAN for a list 
  of Workgroups".

- A URL in the form smb://w2k_domain/ would indicate a specific w2K 
  Domain.  As I understand it, the way to access the list of servers in 
  the domain is to send an LDAP query to the Active Directory Domain 
  Controller.

  Has anyone implemented this?  Is anyone likely to implement this?

I am tempted to leave LDAP out of the SMB URL specification entirely.  
That would mean that there would be no way to use the SMB URL to locate an 
AD server.  The LDAP URL would need to be used instead.  This makes 
logical sense to me, since there is already a URL form for LDAP.

There are two problems with my approach, however:

1) The ldapsearch tool returns an error if I aim it at an AD server:
   ldap_sasl_interactive_bind_s: Unknown authentication method
   The web browsers I've tried (those few that support LDAP) don't seem to 
   be able to connect either.

2) There's the "user experience" issue.  If a user types in 
   smb://nt_domain/ and gets a list of SMB servers, they may expect to be 
   able to type in smb://w2k_domain/ and get a similar list.

I'd love to hear comments on this.  We've hashed it out before, but not to 
any viable conclusion.

The big question:  Has anyone actually implemented this?  If so, it would 
be great to hear about it.

Chris -)-----

-- 
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh at ubiqx.mn.org
OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/    -)-----   crh at ubiqx.org