Solving: samba registry with client programs

[simo]

On Thu, 2012-04-19 at 10:57 +0200, Stef Walter wrote: 
> On 04/18/2012 09:40 PM, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> > The only problem with this is if we mirror this data somewhere
> > else we'll never fix the problem correctly - which is to have
> > a library that asks smbd.
> > 
> > Is half-a-loaf better than none in this case ?
> 
> It's not clear to me that using smbd to access the registry is really
> 'fully baked'. I mean plenty of people run winbindd or other samba
> client apps without smbd.
> 
> If those people use the registry (eg: with "net ads join" to configure
> smbconf correctly with discovered settings) then this registry-via-rpc
> would fall apart.
> 
> In addition would you really expect smbclient to stop working because
> smbd isn't running for some reason?
> 
> To make registry-via-rpc a 'correct' solution a daemon would need to be
> started for clients when smbd isn't running. This would need to be done
> via some startup mechanism, such as setuid, socket based activation
> (systemd) or DBus. Starts to get quite complex, no?
> 
> In my (uninformed) opinion, a fully baked solution would be:
> 
>  * Split the smbconf part of the registry into its own file, and use a
>    less brittle file format for the smbconf registry, one that doesn't
>    have problems with readers locking.

I think an ideal interface would be a daemon that implements just the
registry and a dbus activation method for system clients, but that would
be a lot of work.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
Samba Team GPL Compliance Officer <simo at samba.org>
Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, Inc. <simo at redhat.com>