PATCH: 'source environment' param and % token subs for 'netbios name'

[Nicolas Williams]

On Sat, Jan 29, 2000 at 12:35:44AM +1000, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> Hi Nico
> 
> At 06:27 AM 1/29/00 +1100, Nicolas Williams wrote:
> >On Sat, Jan 29, 2000 at 04:57:12AM +1100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> >> >  - Also, on our HA servers it's possible to have two Samba personalities
> >> >    running at the same time (one system fails and the other takes over
> >> >    -- we setup our home dir and applications file servers to do HA
> >> >    backup for each other -- we use the interfaces paramters to do this).
> >> 
> >> whooooaaa.  MAJOR advanced functionality.
> >> 
> >> nico, can you write this up, how to set it up?  that's kind of... really
> >> important marketing points for samba.
> >
> >I believe I have written; last summer and fall most likely. In fact, I
> >requested the features in this patch.
> 
> This sort of feature is so important for HA that I am about to commit your
> patches to 2.0.7, if Jeremy hasn't already done it.

He told me that the patch would make 2.0.7, though most likely not 2.0.7
pre1.

This feature doesn't enable Samba HA (we do it with Samba 1.9.18p10!)
but it sure will make the necessary scripts FAR more trivial.

Example:

[global]
	source environment = /etc/smb.conf.env.%$(HA_PERSONALITY)
	source environment = /etc/smb.conf.env
	netbios name = %$(SAMBA_NETBIOS_NAME)
	netbios aliases = %$(SAMBA_NETBIOS_ALIASES)
	bind interfaces = %$(SAMBA_BIND_IFS)
	interfaces = %$(SAMBA_IFS)
	workgroup = %$(SAMBA_WORKGROUP)
	security = domain
	wins server = %$(SAMBA_WINS_SERVER)
	passwd server = %$(SAMBA_DOMAIN_DCS)
	server string = %$(SAMBA_SERVER_DESCRIPTION)
	...
	include = /etc/smb.shares.conf.%$(HA_PERSONALITY)
	include = /etc/smb.shares.conf
	...

Then the start/stop scripts need only set HA_PERSONALITY as appropriate,
if at all.

And that's IT.

Writing tools to administer these environment files will be very easy.
Forget SWAT, in its current incarnation...

The incidence of Samba servers accidentally configured as PDCs should
drop drastically once Samba ships with packages and tools that work that
way.

> If Jeremy doesn't like the patch, he can argue about it.

He's not told me that he dislikes it... :)

> Now that is interesting (about NFS, that is).  I have been using the bind
> interfaces feature for a while as a way of setting up for HA on a paid of
> Linux machines I manage.  I haven't gotten around to actually implementing
> the HA stuff, but will soon.

Veritas HA does the "take over the failed host's IP addresses and start
its services" thing. Works well, except for some quirks.

However, because most Unix services cannot be configured to bind to
specific IP addresses only you can get some strange behaviour,
particularly if you try to have the HA servers be clients of each other.
In fact, Veritas explicitly does NOT support having HA Veritas NFS
servers be NFS clients.

The lesson is to make most Unix daemons, even ones like the portmapper,
ypbind and others be configurable to bind to specific IP addresses...

... JUST LIKE Samba.

> >Nico
> >
> 
> Regards
> -------
> Richard Sharpe, sharpe at ns.aus.com, Master Linux Administrator :-),
> Samba (Team member, www.samba.org), Ethereal (Team member, www.zing.org)
> Co-author, SAMS Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours
> Author: First Australian 5-day, intensive, hands-on Linux SysAdmin course


Nico
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