SAMBA for VMS

[John E. Malmberg]

>From:   "Stephen L Arnold" <sarnold#coyote.rain.org>
>On 18 Jul 99, "Weiss, Robert" <WeissR#philau.edu> had questions
>about Samba for VMS:
>
>> I just installed Samba for VMS (1.9.17p4) on a DecServer 1000A
>> running VMS 7.1
>
>This is a *very* old version of samba...


It is the newest version that VMS binaries are currently available for.
See http://ifn03.ifn.ing.tu-bs.de/ifn/sonst/samba-vms.html

There is a SAMBA-VMS list there and it is not too busy.


>[snip]
>> My main question is about Encrypted Passwords.....Does this
>> release of Samba support them, or do I have to modify the clients
>> who want access to our Alpha to support un-encrypted passwords
>> for now?  If this release does not support encrypted
>> passwords....any time from for version 2.x for VMS?


>I'm not sure; I would recommend upgrading to at least 1.9.18 (p10).
>You will then have encrypted password support.  Get the source
>package.  If you can't use (or don't have) the VMS C compiler, then
>get gcc.

A source Sambavms 1.9.19-pre-alpha that will compile under GCC 2.8.1 for
OpenVMS/VAX is available at ftp://ftp.qsl.net/pub/wb8tyw/

It is derived from David Mathog (who also posts on this list) merging the
SAMBA code with the older VMS port of Eckart Meyer.  He built it using DEC C
on OpenVMS/ALPHA.

The version that I built has only been tested under GCC 2.8.1/VAX with the
CMU-IP TCP/IP.

The only thing that is known to be non-functional with the version I built
is the local password file for SMBD.  David provided FORTRAN index file
routines for this and I did not have access to a FORTRAN compiler at the
time.

The SMBCLIENT does work for connecting to NT systems with encrypted
passwords.

This version also supports mulitple dots in directories and files.
Directories can be 15 levels deep from a physical device on files served
from SMBD.

It should be able to compile and run on OpenVMS/ALPHA and DEC C with out too
much effort.

>The Makefile is fairly easy to setup (I'm sure there's a
>block of compiler flags for VMS; they're already there for a bunch
>of other systems).

As of the 1.9.19 pre-alpha, the VMS specific code seems to have been removed
from the main SAMBA code.

Eckart Meyer is working on a version 2.0.x, and I am not sure of what his
current status is at.  Check the archives of the SAMBA-VMS list, available
at mirrors of the http://www.samba.org site.

I am also working on a port of version 2.0.x that uses an additional library
that supplies functions that SAMBA uses that are not present in the DEC C
RTL.  I am aiming for 100% parity of features, and attempting to avoid all
modifications of the UNIX samba code.

I expect that Eckart will have functional release code before I do, because
I am using this mainly as a learning project.


One main obstacle to getting SAMBA-VMS up to par is that the "fcntl()"
function is non-functional for locking in all known versions of the DEC C
RTL.

Other interesting things are like the UNIX SAMBA code seems is treating the
dev_t type returned from "stat()" and friends as a integer that uniquely
represents the device name that it points to.  That is, a given device name
will always return the same integer.

In OpenVMS, that assumption will probably not work, and can not be easily
worked around.  From what I can see, this mainly affects caching and shared
writing locks, not something I will need to get functional for my first
tests, but definitely affecting performance.

There effectively is no way to get the CONFIGURE scripts or AUTOCONF to work
on OpenVMS.  They depend on features not present on most OpenVMS sites.

>> My second question involves the setup error message I received...
>
>Sorry, can't help there (I'm somewhat familiar with VMS fortran and
>some system services, but that's about it).  I'd start reading
>those great DEC manuals...


Many of the great DEC OpenVMS manuals are at:
http://www.openvms.digital.com:8000/

I missed the original post, so I do not know what the message in question
was.

If the Message help facility is installed on your system, then a little more
verbose explanations for VMS generated messages can be obtained with
$HELP/MESSAGE

$HELP/MESSAGE text

>*************************************************************
>Steve Arnold                     http://www.rain.org/~sarnold
>Linux:  It's not just for nerds anymore...


John Malmberg
OpenVMS v7.2: A New Model of Computing

Free OpenVMS for hobby use licenses available that includes compilers and
more.
See http://www.openvms.digital.com
[Probably heresy to some on this list :-) ]