[jcifs] Re: Microsoft MCPP and WSPP docs

[Christopher R. Hertel]

Sounds like a worthy challenge.  I will have some free time later this week
and I'll see what I can find.

Chris -)-----

Michael B Allen wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:22:00 -0600
> "Christopher R. Hertel" <crh at ubiqx.mn.org> wrote:
>>>> Don't forget the newest pile of doco:  Microsoft has released the
>>>> documentation they wrote for MCPP and WSPP programs.
>>>>
>>>>   http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=573&SiteID=1
>>>>
>>>> Time will tell how much better this doco is relative the previous attempts.
>>> Yeah, I saw this but I wasn't sure if it was ok to read it. Are there
>>> still conditions attached to this stuff? I'm not just doing OSS anymore. I
>>> have commercial software that I license to people.
>> According to the press release, the only restriction would be patent claims.
>>  They even go as far as to say they won't sue over those for non-commercial use.
>>
>> Some of the docs now actually list the relevant patents, which helps.
>>
>> I'll know more soon, but here's an article from The Reg:
>>   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/microsoft_goes_open/
>>
>> They gave me a T-shirt that says "Reports of snowballs in hell" on the back.
>> (No, really.)
> 
> Have you looked at these docs? If so, let's do a little test. Below
> are three things that I'd like to know. If you're up to it, see if you
> can find them.
> 
> 1) Regarding the SPNEGO protocol, the initiator sends a NegTokenInit
> and the acceptor sends a NegTokenResp. But the SMB_COM_NEGOTIATE
> response deviates from this behavior in that it sends NegTokenInit but
> it's the acceptor. The subsequent SMB_COM_SESSION_SETUP_ANDX resumes
> normal behavior and sends a NegTokenInit. Is there any mention of this
> SMB specific oddity in the new docs?
> 
> 2) DFS clients check the authority component of a UNC to determine if
> it's a domain or a server so that if it's a domain it knows to do a
> referral and initiate DFS resolution. That check is a simple lookup in
> what is called the "trusted domains cache" or "SPC cache". Is there
> anything in the new docs about how DFS clients retrieve this list of
> trusted domains?
> 
> 3) There is a connectionless (UDP) LDAP request for the netlogon
> attribute of the RootDSE that MSDN documentation refers to only as a
> "CLDAP ping". Much like a corresponding mailslot request, it is used
> to retrieve basic but very important information about a domain
> controller including it's DNS domain name, NetBIOS domain name and
> GUID. There appears to be at least 4 levels of information that can be
> retrieved controlled by an NtVer attribute in the filter. In these new
> MS docs, is there any mention of the binary blob of data returned in
> this very common CLDAP netlogon attribute query?
> 
> Mike
> 
> PS: Admittedly with the exception of #2 these are fairly obscure
> things that I don't expect you to find. But perhaps that's my point. I
> don't believe that MS actually knows everything about their own
> protocols and thus there's no way that they can possibly document
> everything. I will be truly impressed when Microsoft creates an
> "Office of Interoperability and Standards" with an email address where
> we can send these little questions so that someone can look at the
> source code and publicly release addendums.
> 

-- 
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
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