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




More information about the samba-technical mailing list