Interested in contributing to Samba through the GSoC

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Fri, 2014-03-14 at 18:52 +0000, Marta Sequeira wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thank you for your reply!
> 
> That larger task on AD DC that you suggested seems interesting, can you
> please elaborate on what the task consists of and what are its goals?
> 
> Best regards,

To be honest, I don't have a well-defined task with specific goals all
mapped out.  I found this out the hard way when Garming Sam joined me as
an intern in-person at our employer Catalyst.  It took over a month to
find a topic to work on that was practical and didn't first involve
learning all the protocols!  (We ended up working on the smb.conf
parsing and handling, and in that he has been incredibly successful). 

However, here are some things our users regularly complain about in the
AD DC:
 - no easy way to remove dead Windows or Samba domain controllers
 - importing a domain from 'Samba3' (the classicupgrade) should import
more LDAP attributes, and allow ongoing migration.
 - no GPO support in the DC (the task would be to 
 - our internal DNS server has issues (and the database mapping and
crypto is not sufficiently)
 - no multiple domain support
 - no browsing support (netbios workgroup browsing)
 - no support for DFS-R replication (sysvol and netlogon)
 - we use a different winbind in the AD DC

The first two are more simple, the DNS task is what I was going to have
Garming work on, except it still involved learning to much at once. 

The remainder are HARD tasks, and I wouldn't normally suggest them as
GSoC tasks except that you are at a Masters level. 

What I suggest is that you install Samba, play with it and find an area
of frustration (from this list or your own experience) and get started
on it.  Then we can frame a proposal around that.  It isn't as easy as a
suggestion off the page, but such a proposal would have the weight of
knowing you had to really research it.  

I know you don't have long (deadline next week), so I'm happy to talk to
you on the phone or over our Mumble server early next week if that
helps. 

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba