CVS update: samba/source/msrpc (fwd)

Nicolas Williams Nicolas.Williams at wdr.com
Fri Jan 21 18:29:54 GMT 2000


On Sat, Jan 22, 2000 at 05:08:13AM +1100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, Nicolas Williams wrote:
> > I like it.
> > 
> > I've not had a chance to use SAMBA_TNG so some of what I'm about to
> > suggest may already be there.
> 
> i'll review what you say / confirm.
>  
> > Here goes:

[...]

> >     - client transport addresses (NetBIOS name, IP address)
> >     - share name (IPC$)
> 
> i'm going to have to do this, and it needs to be _much_ more than just
> this.  from standard_sub_basic():
> 
> - local_machine
> - remote machine
> - remote proto
> - logged-in username (changes for a NetrSamLogon or a NetWkstaGetInfo!!!)
> - remote arch
> - pid
> - VERSION string
> - ENVIRONMENT variables
> - client ip
> - automount server
> - unix username

But storing that in a tdb keyed by <PID, vuid> as I suggested below
would save you the trouble.

> 
> >     - username used to authenticate to share (user, guest, null [anonymous])
> 
> yep, got that.  i also send the unix username + unix groups, to save me
> having to do a getgroups() and getgrnam() on thhe othe side: why go to all
> the hassle of generating more work for aan mssrpc daemon than is necessar:
> it's already had to do a fork() just like smbd and we're even considering
> optimising things so we don't have to do too many forks().

So that falls under the "various  information" clause I used below. Put
it in the tdb record indexed by <PID, vuid>.

Why write the same data many times?

[...]

> >     - length of DCE/RPC data
> 
> weelll... that was the first implementation!
> 
> i discovered that if i use read_data_with_timeout(min bytelength =1, max
> bytelength = MAX_SMB_DATA_SIZE) that you don't _need_ to send the length
> of the DCE/RPC data.
> 
> cool, huh?

Hmmm, so you pass SMB packets to the DCE/RPC daemons? Wouldn't it be
easier to just pass the [reassembled] DCE/RPC payload? That would
simplify the DCE/RPC daemon code base. It may be too late for that
though.

> >  - SMBD should also maintain tdb records indexed by
> > 
> >    <PID, client name, share name, user name>
> > 
> >    tuples. The record should contain various information, including
> >    standard_sub_basic substitutions.
> 
> weelll... oh bugger.  OH NO, NOT ANOTHER CHANGE TO THE SOCKET INTERFACE!
> 
> the smbd pid + the smb vuid should be sufficient to uniquely identify a
> user.
> 
> so the tdb recond index can be (pid, vuid).
> 
> 
> > This way the DCE/RPC daemons and admin/debug tools will be able to get
> > at all information they might need for their tasks.
> 
> yep!
> 
> > This way you can
> > also avoid forking separate DCE/RPC daemons for each request and instead
> > have one process for each daemon and thus add TNG support for platforms
> > that don't have fork()
> 
> uh... you _Are_ aware that DCE/RPC functions are exactly that: functions.
> and function calls can block for an _awfully_ long time.

So? At least this leaves the door open for a future asynchronous or
threaded implementation.

> if you start thinking in terms of "oh, we'll have one daemon and have it
> deal with multiple requests" then the consequences are that one user can
> trash several other user's requests.
> 
> and i _Really_ don't want to consider doing an asynchronous implementation
> of the dce/rpc client and server code, in a similar fashion to how nmbd
> works.  i _know_ how nmbd works, i wrote the second implementation (and a
> third intermediate one that was never used, which pissed me off) and it
> took months to plan the data structures and two years to implement fully
> and three people to work on it.
> 
> so no, i don't want to go down this road.  i'll make it as easy as i can
> for someone _else_ to do this, but no, it's not one for me.

Just leave the door open.

> > Not only that, but this would provide a way to fix the oplock problem
> > I've had with Solaris and which I solved by using root preexec/postexec
> > scripts that create PID files named by <PID, client name, share name,
> > user name> tuples and which are used to identify (and kill) stale SMBD
> > processes.
> 
> interesting!  sounds like something that samba ought to be doing itself!

Indeed!

> > No doubt this is much the way NT does it. DCE/RPC calls must be passed
> > to the appropriate service threads by the kernel (or whatever processes
> > SMB traffic) along with extra information and or handles for obtaining
> > that extra information through other APIs.
> 
> weelll... the NT implementation is much simpler.
> 
> they CERTAINLY don't totally reconfigure according to user / workstation /
> type of connection the way that samba does!!!!

Heh!

> and they use threads.
> 
> no, no and no.  we're _not_ going to use threads in samba.  no, repeat,
> no.  what's the limit on a select file descriptor set?  256?  there are
> samba installations out there which peak at around 3,000 simultaneous
> connections.  you think threads can cope with 3,000 connections?  i don't!

That limit varies from platform to platform. Anyways, Samba isn't ready
for threading, though that could come on a daemon by daemon basis if the
IPC system you use leaves room for it (i.e., SMBD processes should talk
to a master daemon for each DCE/RPC service -- let that master daemon
choose to fork(), pre-fork(), thread, whatever.

> :)

:)

> lukes
> 
> nico, thanks for the comments.  it looks like i'm going to have to add the
> remote vuid to the socket setup stage as well as the remove pid.

I'm glad to be of [cheering type] help :)

Nico
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