SNIA CIFS TR
Andrew Bartlett
abartlet at samba.org
Wed Jul 31 02:15:01 GMT 2002
"Michael B.Allen" wrote:
>
> On Tue, 30 Jul 2002 20:24:48 +1000
> Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at samba.org> wrote:
>
> > > > > I wish someone
> > > > > would do a real analysis and write some practical documentation.
> > > >
> > > > A volenteer! Great! I'll see what help I can be, but you might want to
> > >
> > > This is such a crappy argument. I file this one with the "if you don't like
> > > it, submit a patch" argument. If someone writes some code that does X, the
> > > chances of someone else, possibly much more capable, of also writing code
> > > to do X decreases greatly. So now the SNIA comes up with a crappy document
> > > (nice formatting; too bad it's a MS Word doc) and another group that might
> > > have formed a real working group that would turn out to do some good
> > > research, generate dependency graphs, maintain a bug database, etc has now
> > > gone off and done something else instead.
> >
> > So? But this is the document the CIFS community is working with - and
> > it really is the best we have - despite its' defficiencies.
> >
> > As to 'why SNIA'? Well, SNIA puts on the annual CIFS conference, and MS
> > is a member. Given the need for MS participation in an forum that
> > seriously attempts to document the protocol, and the need for a vender
> > neutral body, I can certainly understand SNIA's role
>
> I'm directing my grievances at the working group members and less so the
> CIFS interests for being irresponsible. I think the attitude of SNIA
> members is too optimistic for the quality of work being performed. Nothing
> personal folks but this document is a turd. What makes anyone think
> Microsoft will implement any changes to their servers even if Leach himself
> ok's your infolevels?
I don't think that's the point.
The point is to document what extenstions are being made to the
protocol, so that others wishing to use them can, or so they don't chose
the same infolevel etc. I don't think for a minute that MS will pick up
either the Unix or Mac extenstions - but if you author a NAS appliance,
and don't want to store NT streams, you *may* with to implement the Mac
extenstions to allow Dave to correctly function anyway. Or you *may*
wish to export Unix attributes in the same way that other servers do.
Nothing compulsary about it, but better documented than not...
> They won't unless they're politically motivated.
> We're sitting on our hands right now and it's sad. I think MS's
> participation wavered because they didn't take the WG seriously. There were
> issues presented to MS that could have been resolved in some Netapp lab by
> a high school intern. They should have done some real work and *then*
> approched MS with *real* brain teasers like what some little mystery byte
> of flags does. If you just ask general questions it's too much work for the
> arrogant bastards. If the WG had asked very specific questions they would
> have had much better results and added real content to the document.
This has been raised and discussed before, at the last CIFS conference.
> There needs to be a concerted effort to identify the issues and sort out a
> definitive position on each. The WG could take a tip from the W3C in this
> respect. They have open forums for dicussion. Anyone can subscribe to the
> various mailing lists and contribute. I didn't see *any* discussion on any
> SNIA mailing list or anywhere else. When I posted a pertinent factoid I
> never received a message that it was acknowledged or dismissed and why. The
> W3C keeps everything freely available on Web in HTML and updates it
> frequently.
>
> I have prepared the following page as an example:
>
> http://www.eskimo.com/~miallen/cifs/cifs-issues.html
>
> I hope the WG considers changing their strategy because I for one think
> they're making negative progress.
>
> --
> A program should be written to model the concepts of the task it
> performs rather than the physical world or a process because this
> maximizes the potential for it to be applied to tasks that are
> conceptually similar and more importantly to tasks that have not
> yet been conceived.
--
Andrew Bartlett abartlet at pcug.org.au
Manager, Authentication Subsystems, Samba Team abartlet at samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College abartlet at hawkerc.net
http://samba.org http://build.samba.org http://hawkerc.net
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