Possible to integrate Samba with Roxen Challenger?

[Mattias Wingstedt]

Hi, I hope this is the right forum for what might seem like some
rather strange questions. I'm trying to find out ways to create
support for the SMB protocol module for our GPL:ed webserver, Roxen
Challenger. One idea is to to modify Samba to work as a frontend to
Roxen Challenger. My questions are if this could be feasible and if so
if it would be something that you feel Samba should be used for?

Now I might have to explain a bit about Roxen Challenger for these
questions to make sense. Challenger is a highly modular web server,
where the modules interact via a powerful API. This enables new
modules to radically change the behaviour of the server, while at the
same time keeping old functionality. When we added the FTP protocol
module it was still possible to use .htaccess files for the security
policy of the files being uploaded. Support for LDAP is a simple
matter of a new Authentification module.

Challenger makes it possible to run a web server without giving the
users unix accounts, while at the same time giving all necessary
services. The users could simply be attributes in a LDAP directory,
their web home directory created when they first log in. That
directory might not even be available as a unix directory but might be
a part of a CVS repositary or a table in a database.

Note the reason for a SMB protocol module is to further simplify
interaction with Windows computers. Instead of having to use ftp the
users could get the web server mounted on their desktops. Just using a
Samba server in parallel with the web server is not enough, since the
users might not have unix account nor a simple unix directory.

The implementation I'm thinking of is making Samba ask Challenger
about user authentification, directory listings, files ans so forth
through a simple protocol. Samba would still be a separate process,
but would be spawned and controlled by Challenger. The protocol could
of cource be used by other servers that have similar need of the SMB
protocol.

I must confess that although the Roxen Challenger web server is GPLed
software we do sell commercial modules to it. The Roxen Platform is a
collection of such modules, that would also benefit from a SMB
protocol module.

The reason I ask here is twofold. First I do think you can tell me
whether it would be simple or extremely hard to implement these
changes, since I found the size of the Samba source code slightly
intimidating. Secondly I want to know if you think this is a good
idea, and if it could make it into the Samba distribution. If you
don't like it then I would implement the SMB protocol module in some
other way.

-- 
Mattias Wingstedt
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