[Samba] RE: Samba newbie question...

[John H Terpstra]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2002 peter.a.bryant at mainroads.qld.gov.au wrote:
> Hi John, I don't actually use swat, so am not highly qualified to offer
> suggestions.  Anyway, here's my two cents.  :-)
>
> I would like to use a nice gui such as SWAT to manage my conf file,
> but don't because I have heard that it changes the structure -
> ordering of parameters etc. within the conf file, as well as removing
> comments. From some of your comments, I get the impression that you
> feel this is a minor matter, but it is the reason that I don't use
> swat, and I have read comments from several other people suggesting
> the same thing - don't use swat if you have a carefully organised conf
> file. In your opinion, is swat mainly a tool for optimising the conf
> file? What I would like it to be is a tool for organising/managing
> conf parameters, for easily viewing what value each parameter is set
> to (even if it's default value), viewing which ones are specifically
> set in the conf file and which are just default, and for viewing
> individual shares and what parameters are set for each share.

My first exposure to real problems with excessively sized smb.conf files
was in a site that had 800 MS Windows clients. They had a full smb.conf
config history in the file. It was 156Kb in size. At that time, samba read
smb.conf (as it does now) every 20 seconds, except now we only read the
actual file if the last change is more recent than when smbd started.

Anyway, at this site the system load with all clients idle was 30! Work it
out:

800 x 156Kb x 3/60 = 6.2MB/sec of file system I/O without doing a thing.
By optimizing the smb.conf file this dropped the load to nothing.  The
resulting file was just under 10Kb in size.

So you see, this radically taught me that config files are no place for
documentation. That should be done in a separate file. SWAT optimizes the
smb.conf file for minimum size, only writing out parameters that are not
at default.

> I would like to be able to set and change parameters, and when I'm done, for
> SWAT to write changes back into the existing file without changing the way that
> I've got my conf nicely set out.  (including comments and several "include"
> files).

So, have you checked 'testparm'? It will tell you all config parameter
settings.

> Is this possible?  Is it likely to happen?  Do I ask too much?  :-) I
> think perhaps other people would like it not to mess with their pretty
> organised smb.conf also.

Well, if someone will send me patches that do this as an option, I'll
gladly review and commit if the code is clean and not in conflict with
samba coding standards.

> Well, I told you I haven't used SWAT, so feel free to ignore my input.

I am looking for a convincing argument why SWAT is bad!
I am also looking for informed input on how we can improve the utility of
SWAT.

- John T.

-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht at samba.org