[SAMBA4] Should 'PDC status' be an smb.conf, or ldb parameter?

[simo]

On Wed, 2006-12-13 at 09:58 +1100, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> The can of worms comes from then determining what server role we are in,
> for the other dependent services.  For example, our NBT server should
> not take the <1b> unless it is the PDC.  Should this continue to be an
> smb.conf setting, or should we read the directory.  If we read the
> directory, how often and from where should we handle this?  Likewise,
> there are announce flags and other similar places where the PDC/BDC
> distinction still remains.

> I've in the past argued for keeping the text-based smb.conf, but for
> this setting, it seems that the directory is more appropriate. 

I cast my vote for the directory, we need to honor that bit anyway if we
are going to deal with Win AD Controllers, and Windows admin tools.
I think we need to be able to change role without the need to change
smb.conf by hand.

smb.conf is a nice to have for savvy unix admins, but it is a formidable
barrier at developing user friendly tools and GUIs and at driving
servers remotely. A directory today is seen as an acceptable place to
store configurations and admins can easily use ldbedit or othe ldap tool
to manage them either at the shell prompt or by using rich clients.

There are a bunch of settings we need to monitor in the directory, I am
thinking we should probably build up a little tool that will use
notifications (we still need to implement notifications in ldb but it is
in my todo list) and let use register function calls. This way we will
be able to manage relevant changes in the directory without polling or
relying on some strange heuristics.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
Samba Team GPL Compliance Officer
email: idra at samba.org
http://samba.org