Samba4 on OpenBSD: a report (tags: waf, s3fs, ntvfs)

[Jérémie Courrèges-Anglas]

Hi,

last week we (OpenBSD) have switched the net/samba package in our ports
tree from latest Samba3 (+ patches) to Samba4 - samba-4.1.19 to be
exact.  The work on Samba4 was started by OpenBSD developer Vadim
Zhukov, who did a big amount of work.  The co-maintainers of this samba
port are Ian (cc'd) and I.

Here's a bit of feedback about the transition to samba4.

One thing made the transition complicated: waf.  The problem is that, as
opposed to autotools that have been tested on and have knowledge of tons
of environments, waf is young.  Plus it encourages you to write custom
code, which then breaks on "exotic" setups.  This is the case on
OpenBSD, where we use a traditional shared libraries naming scheme.
Right now updating to samba-4.2.3 is not possible because of changes in
this regard in samba 4.2.x.  I'll try to discuss these problems in time
with Samba developers that want to give a hand.

There is another particular point that matters for OpenBSD support: s3fs
vs. ntvfs.  I have lightly tested a Samba AD DC setup, which required
the use of ntvfs instead of s3fs (the default).  s3fs failed because ACL
support is required, alas "POSIX" ACLs aren't available on OpenBSD (and
there is no plan to change that).  Thus I'd like to inquire what are the
plans regarding ntvfs and s3fs.  Maybe s3fs could be made to work
without requiring ACLs?

Thank you for the hard work that has been done on Samba 4.

Cheers,
-- 
jca | PGP : 0x1524E7EE / 5135 92C1 AD36 5293 2BDF  DDCC 0DFA 74AE 1524 E7EE