Comments request to refute arguments about Samba...

The Hermit Hacker scrappy at hub.org
Mon Dec 13 17:54:04 GMT 1999


I can't answer any of this, but the following was taken from a thread on
the "Novell Technology Transfer Partners List
<NOVTTP at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>" and passed over to me by my boss...

Any comments/refutations/etc most definitely accepted...

Please note that *I'm* the Senior Unix Systems Administrator at the
University I work at, and have been moving us towards Samba since I
started here 2 years ago, with very successful results...but, I have a
Novell/Netware department to fight against that uses whatever ammo *they*
can come up with to dispute it...:(

Pointers to web pages would help, as well as comments about what is said
below, especially that first one...

Thanks....

======================

        Samba is an implementation of old Lan Manager stuff. For a listing
of what real Lan Man did/does a reference is "Microsoft Lan Manager,
Programmer's Reference", MS Press, was $40.

        With Lan Man one has groups, and groups, and uncounted more
groups.

	They use the word "shares" these days. And the wire is cheerfully
busy with NetBIOS vintage traffic, making bridging a must. Management is
equally delightful, especially security.

        So if 1980 technology is good enough then use Samba. Think small,
don't interact, that's the stuff.

        An oh by the way on Solaris. Unless those machines are fully
patched and carefully sealed off then the bad guys will feast on them and
all machines they can reach via packet snoop programs. We have had a very
bad time with that part of things and the problems are not over.

=======================

I understand, Joe. That's why I am asking for ammo.

Our UNIX Sysadmin does a good job with Solaris. Does SAMBA open up other
security holes ?

"Think small" is an unlikely reason that I can present to a VP. (not if I
want to keep my job)

=======================

There has been serious exploration of SAMBA as replacement for Netware by
the Systems Group here at UK. Right now, they are testing a "Student
Locker" system using SAMBA. It isn't widely in use yet, but results have
been promising (I guess). One concern has been the amount of RAM needed
for each SAMBA connection. On the test machine, SMB connections are using
~3MB/connection. At that rate, we'd need about 3GB of RAM to accomodate
our ~1000 machines.


Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy at hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org 



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