Usability of 'samba-tool domain provision'

Alexander Bokovoy ab at samba.org
Wed May 4 12:40:02 UTC 2016


On Wed, 04 May 2016, Rowland Penny wrote:
> On 04/05/16 12:16, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:
> > On Wed, 04 May 2016, Peter C. Kelly wrote:
> > > Andreas said:
> > > 
> > > > This documents issues I
> > > > found during provisioning. samba-tool is far away from being user friendly.
> > > > a) It isn't clear what domain is from 'samba-tool domain provison --help'
> > > I have raised bug 11894, and attached a patch which addresses this
> > > point as per Rowland's suggested wording.
> > > 
> > > > b) The --realm option is essential but at the end of the help ...
> > > The reason that the realm is way down the bottom is that it is under a
> > > heading "Samba Common Options", along with configFile debuglevel and
> > > option.
> > > 
> > > What is currently holding me up from developing the second trivial
> > > patch is a need for a bit more clarity on how this --help output
> > > should look.  It seems to me that if the --domain parameter is
> > > compulsory, then the heading text should say so,
> > > and that if a realm has to be specified (or read in from an existing
> > > conf file) then perhaps that should be mentioned in the introductory
> > > text as well.
> > It would, perhaps, be good to have it in both categories to avoid
> > changing common options' help.
> > 
> 
> It doesn't need to be in both categories, if you do an interactive
> provision, there is this:
> 
>             realm = ask("Realm", default)
>             if realm in (None, ""):
>                 raise CommandError("No realm set!")
> 
> If you specify everything with the command, there is this:
> 
>             realm = sambaopts._lp.get('realm')
>             if realm is None:
>                 raise CommandError("No realm set!")
> 
> So, if you don't provide the 'realm', it refuses to continue and tells you
> why.
There is a difference between running the tool and reading the
documentation. ;) If we can improve expectations by pointing out that
realm and other options are really not options here but required
arguments, it would save some time to people who want to automate.
Manual page for samba-tool is very short on what could be expected from
the user in specific commands, unfortunately. The help output isn't
helping too.

-- 
/ Alexander Bokovoy



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