Change Request: New Environmental Variable for Username

[Roeland M.J. Meyer]

Yet another way is to use the GCOS field in passwd.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba at samba.org [mailto:samba at samba.org]On Behalf Of Crist J.
> Clark
> Sent: Monday, January 31, 2000 9:37 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list SAMBA
> Subject: Change Request: New Environmental Variable for Username
> 
> 
> Presently, the Samba documentation says that the default NetBIOS
> username used by client-type applications is determined by the
> following (from smbclient(1)),
> 
>               If no username is supplied, it will default  to  an
>               uppercase  version of the environment variable USER
>               or LOGNAME in that order.  If no username  is  sup-
>               plied  and  neither environment variable exists the
>               username "GUEST" will be used.
> 
> However, very frequently a username on a given machine might not
> exactly match the username on another, but users may still have a
> nearly one-to-one mapping from one machine to another. Changing the
> USER or LOGNAME variables on the local machine can break local
> applications. So at present, users need to use the '-U' switch on the
> command line every time to enter their username on the foreign server.
> 
> I propose that using an additional environmental variable,
> e.g. SMBUSER, would make life easier for such users. This variable
> could be set once in a user's startup files, and they would no longer
> need to enter the '-U' option each time they used a Samba client.
> 
> For example, user 'johnd' on machineA has an acount on machineB called
> 'jdoe'. Our user need only set SMBUSER equal to 'jdoe' in his startup
> on machineA, and he no longer needs to type it everytime.
> 
> If the SMBUSER variable is not set, Samba would default to the current
> behavior. When it is set, that name is used. The '%' character can
> have the same special meaning as it does for USER or LOGNAME.
> 
> I'd be willing to write the patch, but I thought I would submit the
> idea first. It seems so obvious to me that I worry that there is some
> very good reason NOT to do this.
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> -- 
> Crist J. Clark                           cjclark at home.com
> 
>