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[Dan Shearer]

All,

The Samba team is working very hard on the imminent release of version
1.1.17. This includes many fixes and improvements. As has been commented
by many the documentation needs some work. We need your contributions of
tips, hints, workarounds and general advice for the new documentation.
Please send them to samba-bugs at samba.anu.edu.au with [DOC] in the subject
line, we will be dealing with this as a high priority for the next couple
of days.

As well as needing updates to the files in the docs directory, we have
nothing specific to running Samba on VMS, Netware or OS/2. We have no
comments about the DAVE, AIX, Linux smbfs or DOS clients working with
samba. Surely people must have something to report! 

At the moment we have an FAQ in sgml-linux doc format and a large number
of text files on random topics. The plan is to restructure the FAQ into a
meta-FAQ and some children, reducing the number of text files and
hopefully making information much easier to find.  We also need to include
comments on designing SMB and CIFS networks, authentication mechanisms and
so on. 

The FAQ currently contains (in summary):

        General information
        Information related to Samba on Unix 
        Windows Client questions
        Miscellaneous questions

This is not a helpful design. What we are doing now is splitting up
sambafaq.sgml into a new structure which hopefully reflects the diversity
of client and server platforms Samba is concerned with. Some of the .txt
files naturally fall into this structure, others look more like a HOWTO
document. Borrowing from the Linux world, a HOWTO covers a specific
sequence of steps to achieve a clearly defined task whereas an FAQ is a
collection of short questions and answers confined to a general subject
area.

The proposed new structure runs something like this:

       Samba-META-FAQ.sgml
                general stuff about samba (same as now)
                info about cifs/smb and protocols (not a huge amount)
                strategy info: "designing your network"
                        - authentication schemes
                        - how things scale
                        - using Samba in a mixed environment
                samba as a CIFS server on the Internet

        Samba-Server-FAQ.sgml
                general stuff about what the Samba server does
                common samba config advice
                Specific to unix (from current faq)
                Specific to OS/2
                Specific to VMS
                (specific to Netware... is this alive??)

        Samba-Client-FAQ.sgml
                general stuff about CIFS/SMB clients and Samba
                list of clients with their specific quirks (from various)
                client application issues (from current FAQ)

Please respond to samba-bugs at samba.anu.edu.au as soon as possible.

Thanks,

--
Dan Shearer
Dan.Shearer at unisa.edu.au