multiple nmbds domains workgroups...

[Kenny Stoltz]

Hello,

I seem to have exhausted all other resources (the samba list,
comp.protocols.smb, web searches) so I will turn to Those Who Code. I,
too, am willing to Code, hence I will put forth my issue here and
perhaps gain favor amongst the Coders. :-)

I need support in nmbd for multiple domains and workgroups. I don't know
if you guys are on the samba list, but I have posted sufficent detail
there about the "whys" of this, I would refer you to there first, but I
can repeat myself if necessary, just say the word. Basically I want a
single machine to not only impersonate multiple smbd machines, but also
multiple wins servers, browsers, and pdcs on different workgroups on
different subnets on the same machine. The goal is to be able to run 256
of them from a single machine.

The original plan was to use the includes and netbios aliases to
impersonate, however, nmbd doesn't read netbios aliases, only netbios
name. It uses the interfaces, name, and workgroup specificed within the
netbios name'd includes file (as I write this I realize I could be
incorrect, it could ignore the includes entirely and only use the info
specified in the main smb.conf file). In addition, it is a little
difficult to get multiple nmbd daemons started, however, I have
succeeded in doing so by ditching the pid file it creates. I have to
specify netbios name and config file to get it started, but it works.

However it takes quite a bit of memory and I would like to see it
supported inside samba the way it should be. I realize that I am opening
a can of worms because of the possibility of multiple nmbds on the same
subnet and so on. However, I would think that a "i am not stupid = yes"
in the config file might work with proper warnings in the docs. Nmbd
does work from multiple daemons once you get it started, so I know it
can conceptually work, I just don't want the overhead of an entirely new
process for each domain.

My questions, of course are, is this planned, has anyone done work on
it, is the architecture forgiving enough to allow this, do I need to be
a samba guru to code this myself, and if I did do it would the benefits
be significant?

~!kenny