Samba TNG and Re: SAM user list

[Andrew Bartlett]

Anthony wrote:
> 
> At 12:17 p 18/02/01, Andrew wrote:
> >Anthony wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi everyone,
> > >         I've just joined this and 2 other Samba mailing lists, so I
> > apologise if
> > > my questions have already been covered recently. I tried sending this
> > > E-Mail to samba-bugs, but it bounced back! So here's the original E-Mail:
> > >
> > >         I've recently had to reconfigure my Samba server to enable
> > logon scripts
> > > from Windows 9x machines. I'm running Samba 2.0.7 on RedHat Linux 6.2. As
> > > I'm sure you're all aware, I had to change the Windows machines to
> > > "user-level" security, and I previously had them in "share-level" security.
> > > When I go to share a drive now, I need to select which users are allowed
> > > access to the shares. The problem I'm experiencing is that the Windows
> > > machine cannot find the list of users, and when I try searching for users
> > > in the System Policy Editor I get the error message "An error occurred
> > > trying to access the Address Book Provider". I've read all the man pages
> > > and text files I can find on my system and I can't find the solution. Is
> > > there a solution to my problem or is it something Samba doesn't yet
> > > support? There are no NT servers involved - just Windows 95 workstations
> > > and the Samba server.
> > >
> > >         There it is. I'm a relatively new Linux user, so go easy :)
> 
> >This problem is soon to go away :-).  Basically samba doesn't yet
> >support user level security for Win9X clients (i.e. the user list).
> >This support is implemented in Samba-TNG however, and Jeremy Allison
> >intends to get it done for the Samba 2.2 release.
> >
> >In the mean time your options are:
> >  - Use Samba TNG (NOT recommended, but it does work - I didn't have a
> >choice...)
> >  - Wait a week or two and hope it makes it into the next Samba 2.2 alpha
> >  - Stick with share level security (or decide you don't need to share
> >your clients)
> >
> >Hope this helps,
> >Andrew Bartlett
> >
> >--
> >Andrew Bartlett
> >abartlet at pcug.org.au
> 
> Thanx for the reply Andrew. I could probably do without sharing the clients
> for now, but could you please tell me why you recommend not using the Samba
> TNG you mentioned above? And if it's worth talking about, what exactly is
> Samba TNG? :)
> 
> ----------------------------
> Anthony (aslan at ispdr.net.au)
> ----------------------------

Samba TNG (www.samba-tng.org) was the SAMBA_TNG branch, and has since
forked and become a seperate project.  The branch is very much under
development, and the code is generaly only available from CVS.  Samba
TNG is also not partiularly intended as a file server - its purpose is a
a NT PDC, and includes a less maintained/micro-fixed file server.  The
mainline Samba developers have spent a lot of time on small fixes for
particular behaviour, like the wildcard fixes discussed earlier this
week on samba-technical and things like file locking.  Meanwhile the
Samba TNG folks have been working on other things - like being a better
NT PDC, and have made quite a bit of progress.  

The best bit of this entire mess is that the two parties parted on good
terms, and they raid each others codebases for the best of each others
work (its all GPL).  (The functionality we are both waiting for is being
brought accross from TNG, and TNG apparently occasionly upgrades its
smbd (fileserver) code from the mainline codebase.)

The reasons I don't recomend Samba TNG?  You mentioned your new to
Linux, the code is pre-alpha - CVS snaphosts and given a few weeks it
will no longer be necercery.   In my case I *had* to have Win9X user
lists, so took the plunge.  No major adverse effects, but the system is
a bit slower and there is somthing weird going on with some of the
locking.

Hope this clears things up,
Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett
abartlet at pcug.org.au