[Samba] Re: Running smb without nmb? (Linux Suse 8.1 feature)

[Jay Ts]

[samba-technical has been removed from addresses because
it's for discussing source code.]

l. a. walsh wrote:
> I recently upgraded my Linux distro to SuSE 8.1 which
> came w/samba 2.2.5.
> 
> A feature of the upgrade was that it 'split' the startup
> script for samba from 1 script for _smb_ & _nmb_ to 2 scripts.

Wow, you are right.  I have an installation of SuSE 8.1 here,
and had to boot it up to check.  Looks like I have a note to
add to Chapter 2...

> Question is this: is there any good reason
> for splitting the two or making so one is runnable w/o the other?

AFAIK, SuSE is the only Linux distribution that does this.  But ...
now I'll have to check a few others and see.

I'd guess that they split them up (having both a smb and nmb
script in /etc/init.d) to allow the two daemons to be controlled
independently.  That is, you can do a

# /etc/init.d/nmb restart

and restart just nmbd, without having to restart smbd.

> So how/why would splitting these scripts be a good thing? 

I think it's a matter of opinion whether or not this is better.
Obviously, someone at SuSE thinks it is! :)
I'd suggest writing a script that does something like:

#!/bin/bash

/etc/init.d/smb $1
/etc/init.d/nmb $1

That way, it will work like Red Hat and other distributions,
so you can start/stop/restart/(etc.) Samba with one command.

Jay Ts