libsmbclient: Browsing and a URI spec?

[Steve Langasek]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Simo Sorce wrote:

> What about making a new section (call it [clients]) in the samba smb.conf
> file?

> Here you may put the parameters you need and still use the defaults in the
> global section.
> If you want to change a default simply put it in this section and it may
> also be used by smbclient.

This would be indistinguishable from a file share called 'clients', or a
printer called 'clients', either of which would be perfectly acceptable.
Since I imagine there are sites in the world that use 'clients' as a share
name on their Samba servers, this wouldn't be a very backward-compatible
change to the smb.conf syntax.

Smbclient already takes its global config options out of the [global] block of
smb.conf.  I don't see why it would be necessary to change this behavior.

> Anyway I don't care too much about defaults, as I think callback function
> must be set to lett apps to change any parameter, allowing them to use
> their defaults anyway.

But it's nice to give the administrator one place to configure the defaults
for all applications, rather than having to configure each app separately.

> I also think that a $HOME/.smb.conf may be usefull, but I also think that
> the ability to take parameters from there should be controlled by a switch
> in main smb.conf file

> eg:

> [clients]

> workgroup = office1
> auth domain = central
> allow user conf = no

Why try to restrict per-user configuration?  This doesn't really stop them
from doing what they want to; if you have Samba on the machine, they can still
do what they want to do with smbclient.  It just becomes more cumbersome for
them to do so.  Besides, letting them change these configuration settings
(workgroup to browse?  username to use for authentication?) isn't dangerous or
insecure.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer