Extensions to the include syntax

[Damian Ivereigh]

We are running a large network of printers (>1400) using samba as the PC
front end. We keep all the information about the printers in a network
directory. Currently we generate various smb.conf files from this
directory, however this has a few limitations. Firstly we have to
generate these files, so the updates are not immediate, secondly the
load on scanning the resulting smb.conf files is getting quite high.

So I would like to propose that we extend the "include=" syntax to
either allow the running of a program or even better to run a function
in a shared library. It would probably be better to use a new word
rather than in "include=". All the '%' variables would need to be passed
somehow, but also what samba is looking for.

I can only think of three things that it looks for:-

global info
share names available for browsing
a particular share name it has been asked for

At it's simplest according to what samba is looking for, the program or
function could just return the text that would have been in the smb.conf
file

Any comments, thoughts, flames etc?

Damian

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* Damian Ivereigh     *      ||        ||      * Cisco Systems, Inc.   *
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