automount, samba, desktop.ini issues

[Ryan Wyler]

Program: update_links.pl
Author: Ryan Wyler <ryan at nhorizon.net>

Problem this program solves:

 Windows machines taking a LONG time to browse shares of automount
points which include directories that are inaccessable to the samba
server.

Explanation:

 We have our samba shares setup to mount the unix automount
directories.  The problem is there are MANY automount directories that
the sambaserver does not have access to automount because it is
sensitive data and only shared out to specific netgroups/servers.

 When a Windows machine tries to browse the folders in the automount
point windows attempts to go into EVERY SINGLE directory and pull out a
desktop.ini file.  This is a problem because there are several
directories that the client will stall on because the server does not
have access to the directories.  So windows will request the desktop.ini
file several times, and the server will attempt to mount the directory
several times per each request.  This results in a windows machine
pulling up the directory in around 15 or 20 minutes!

Solution:

 I came up with an idea.  I made a directory called '/samba_links'.  I
wrote this script to go through ALL the automaps and create directories
and links back to the correct location for all the directories that the
server can mount.  This way if a client will never request a desktop.ini
file from a folder that is unmountable to the samba server.

Instalation:
 This has ONLY been tested with NIS, not NIS+.  This has been written
for Solaris on a Solaris 2.6 machine.  For linux it may need some tweeks
but it possiably will work as is.

 Just throw this script in cron to run once a night or whenever you feel
it should run.


Example Setup:

 Crontab looks like (runs every morning at 1:00am):
   0 1 * * *       /opt/samba/bin/update_links.pl > /dev/null 2>&1


 auto.master would look like:
   /projects auto.projects         -rw,retry=3,nobrowse

 auto.projects would look like (server names accessable / unaccessable):
   project1     accessable:/export/project1
   project2     accessable:/export/project2
   project3     unaccessable:/export/project1


 The directories that this script would create in that case would be:

   /samba_links
   /samba_links/projects


 Because the server 'unaccessable' is "unaccessable" the ONLY links that
would be created in this case would be:

   /samba_links/projects/project1 -> /projects/project1
   /samba_links/projects/project2 -> /projects/project2


 Example smb.conf share:

   [projects]
      comment = Project Areas
      browseable = yes
      path = /samba_links/projects
      writable = yes

Note:
  When you edit this, don't forget to use VI .. =)
  ALWAYS do the ':set ts=2' to change the tabspaces over to two spaces
instead of 8 spaces.

--

Ryan Wyler - ryan at nhorizon.net
 TekSystems
   U N I X

[ Unix is very Friendly ...
      ... just pickier about who it makes friends with. ]
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