The Samba4 How To in the wiki, and Samba naming

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Mon, 2012-12-31 at 10:27 -0500, Scott Lovenberg wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 7:01 AM, Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at samba.org> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2012-12-31 at 12:15 +0100, Marc Muehlfeld wrote:
> >> Am 28.12.2012 22:17, schrieb Ricky Nance:
> >> > Any feedback on this is welcome, and I don't mind doing
> >> > changes, but would like the opinion of the samba team before proceeding in
> >> > this direction...
> >>
> >>
> >> What do you think about having a kind of 'table of contents' with all s4
> >> related docs on
> >> http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/
> >>
> >> The DC HowTo I would reduce to just a bare DC installation. All other things
> >> (SElinux, Firewall, setup shares, GPO, etc.) I would take out and place each
> >> on a new page (one page for each topic). And this new pages are linked on the TOC.
> >>
> >> The TOC page we could group into sections like 'DC setup', 'DC
> >> administration', 'member servers', 'other',...
> >>
> >> So a good place to start for all users would be the TOC page then and all
> >> linked pages approach single topics.
> >>
> >> What do you think about that?
> >>
> >> I can help working on that too in my spare time.
> >
> > In terms of the Samba4 page, we need to rework it into a general
> > introduction on Samba 4.0 as an AD DC.  The information on the 'samba4'
> > development project/branch needs to move elsewhere, as goals planned or
> > achieved for that project, which is now complete (as we have merged to
> > Samba 4.0).
> >
> > When we get the page into shape, I'll rename it to 'Samba AD DC',
> > leaving Samba4 as a redirect.   (I'm trying to avoid using the name
> > Samba4, as it is confusing now that we have a full Samba release called
> > Samba 4.0, which does much more than what the 'samba4' project aimed
> > for).
> >
> > There is a lot of work to do on the wiki, and I do thank those who have
> > the time and patience to put into it.
> >
> > Andrew Bartlett
> >
> > --
> > Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
> > Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org
> >
> >
> 
> Andrew, that is to say that you're on board with the idea of a table
> of contents pointing to other pages at the main page for S4 so long as
> it's broken down such that it has an introduction to AD DC and the
> remarks about pre-release subjects are dropped?

It would be nice to have a historical page that describes and links to
some of the development projects that got us to Samba 4.0, such as the
original NTVFS effort, PIDL, tevent, talloc, ldb, Franky, s3fs, the list
currently at the start of the Samba4 page and explains the history for
those interested.  But it doesn't belong on the main page describing the
user-visible AD DC. 

> FWIW, I agree with staying away from the '4.0' thing now that the
> release has happened; it's a full suite with many versions of
> different projects and packages and the suite is an "AD DC" regardless
> of whether you're using the Samba-3 file server with the Samba-4 AD
> DC, etc.

I think this actually muddies the waters even more.  We have released a
single *version* of the suite, which multiple components (some of which
have come from different development strands, but all of which are Samba
4.0). 

The general concept of the AD DC certainly should be described as just
the 'Samba AD DC'. 

We can and should talk about version 4.0 (but keeping in mind that we
will have 4.1 in the future).  But we shouldn't use version numbers to
describe this history of the components, we should use versions only to
say the actual version of the component.  

That is:  We would all recognise it as correct to say we have a Samba
3.6 domain member running smbd and winbindd joined to a Samba 4.0 AD DC
with 'net ads join'.  

The reason I'm encouraging this is that when Samba 4.0 enters
distributions and folks are running Samba 4.1 on their DC, we don't want
to say: we have a Samba3 domain member (actually version 4.0) joined to
a Samba4 DC (actually version 4.1). It is a shorthand that will only get
us into trouble, even if it is one we have used for too long. 

(This is also why the 'domain member' code in the 'samba' binary
actually refuses to start, unless apparently hosting openchange or an
ntvfs proxy, so that the term Samba 4.0 domain member is as unambiguous
as possible in terms of describing the code being used.  I even went to
the extent of making joining a domain with 'samba-tool domain join'
correctly set up the secrets.tdb). 

The other reason, beyond simple confusion is that while the split in our
development will not be lost in the history of the codebase or the minds
of those involved any time soon, we should do what we can to
under-emphasise it.  We have a common build system for all of Samba, and
we continue to see more and more components shared.  We are working to
deal with the rest, and components that once only worked in some
configurations are slowly being reworked to be more broadly applicable.
(For example, did you know pdbedit works against the AD DC?)

I hope I've not confused you further. 

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org