machine names same as usernames -> problems...

[David Bear]

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 09:04:14AM -0500, Bradley W. Langhorst wrote:
> Since samba 2.2.8 seems to be on the way i thought i might raise this
> issue before release.
> 
> I've seen a few users get confused by the fact that their machine name
> and their user name cannot be very similar
> 
> adil (users) and
> adil$ (machine)
> cannot work.
> 
> I think it's not good practice to have machine names and usernames be
> the same but i also don't think samba should fail cryptically in that
> situation...
> 
Is this not a holdover from NETBIOS and the way the NETBIOS 'protocol'
worked -- flat namespace, distributed data base, unique and group
level identifiers, etc.  If you've been doing samba or any other
netbios based network you already know this.  However, what happens
with netbioslees smb? aka port 443 smb...  I just ran into a name
resolution issue that caught me for two hours before I figured it out
-- all due to the flat namespace that netbios has...

samba can't go too far from whatever CIFS may define in this regard,
but maybe use FQDN for the machine name and some other nonqualified
name for user names may be the answer.

and yes, there need to be updated documentation.  I'd volunteer if I
didn't have to read C code..

-- 
David Bear
College of Public Programs/ASU
Mail Code 0803