samba-tool error messages: what needs fixing most?

[Jeremy Allison]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 01:22:55PM +1200, Douglas Bagnall via samba-technical wrote:
>hi,
>
>If you have used samba-tool, you will be aware that it often reports 
>simple problems with long messages talking about exceptions and line 
>numbers and file names and all-caps error codes. Sometimes, well, 
>usually, these messages turn out to mean something like "bad username 
>or password" or "samba.example.com is not a real address".
>
>Every so often (but less often than you'd expect) somebody has the 
>genius idea that samba-tool could just describe the underlying issue, 
>and refrain from the detailed account of subsequent woe. Even Samba 
>Developers have that idea, sometimes, but then they look and think 
>"no, too hard" and get back to debugging clustered inter-forest 
>symlink tevent races with S4U2SELF SPOOLSS ntlmssp_states (or winbind 
>for the extremophiles). But NOW I, fully sober, have decided to 
>*actually* try. Which leads to the question in the subject: which 
>messages need fixing?
>
>So *please* reply to this message with a samba-tool line that says 
>something really stupid, and suggest a better message.
>
>It won't be possible to fix every example, and I will try to be 
>cautious. It is worse to hide real problems than to expose everyone to 
>horrible noise.
>
>
>Q: But won't this break the Application Search-engine Interface (ASI)? 
>How will we be able to find old posts on stac^H^H^H^H 
>https://lists.samba.org that quote the old nonsensical message?
>
>A: Yes. ASI stability is never guaranteed. But you can always get the 
>old traceback by appending -d3 to your samba-tool line.
>
>Q: But I like things the way they are. It makes me look like that guy 
>in the Matrix.
>
>A: You don't want to look like that guy. Also, try -d10.
>
>Q: When?
>
>A: 4.18, and don't expect too much.

Woo hoo ! Douglas !!! Thanks so much for taking
this on ! This would be a wonderful improvement
for our usability.