[Samba] Re: How Samba let us down

[Jay Ts]

John H Terpstra wrote:
> Jay Ts wrote:
> > John H Terpstra wrote:
> > >
> > > For the record, I thouroughly test samba pre-releases before we ever ship.
> > > To the best of my knowledge, NOT ONE version of samba we have released
> > > ever CAUSED (or resulted in) file/data corruption. If I sound defensive -
> > > that's is exactly correct because file corruption is a DEATH issue!
> >
> > Ok, first of all, check my wording carefully:
> >
> > > > I've seen problems in the early 2.2.x releases (when transferring
> > > > large files) that could be perceived as (or called) "file corruption",
> > > > but the problem went away sometime before 2.2.4.
> >
> > The key words are "perceived" and "called". The idea there was that
> > the guy who was having problems was referring to data corruption,
> > while not saying _exactly_ what the problems were. Maybe there can
> > be things that some people would call "data corruption" that actually
> > don't result in loss of data.
> 
> Please consider how people use information using web searches. If they are
> at all concerned about data integrity and a search pulls up incident
> reports claiming data corruption with samba, then the rule of "Guilt by
> association" may prevail. Witness perceptions have been enough to get
> someone convicted of murder. Please understand our extreem sensitivity to
> any reflection on data integrity.

Ok, I see your point.  However, being in the position that "the bullets
will miss me every time", I have to say that I think you are taking
things a bit too seriously, and you could chill a little. :)

There are so many extreme things happening on the planet, and also
in the computer industry, that the only way I've found to get along
with it all is to stay focused on having a nice time of it, and
letting go of the scary stuff. Because no matter what you do, you
can't prevent bad things from happening, only create so many good
things that the bad things can't touch you. Not to philosophise,
but just to explain how I handle things - it's the only way I
know that works!

Anyway, I worded my statements very carefully, and I hope you
can appreciate that.  I'm not going to consider it my job to
do PR for the Samba Team. If someone (out of 6+ billion earthlings)
pulls up one of 2.4+ billion web pages that Google can now find,
and some information on it stimulates him to come to some
irrational conclusion, there isn't anything I can do to stop it.
Careful wording or no.

> > In each case, I "fixed" the problem simply by redoing the operation,
> > and it succeeded on the next try.  And the problems haven't happened
> > since upgrading to 2.2.3, IIRC.  I haven't seen any problems at
> > all in a long time.
> 
> Something was causing the problem. It is important to duplicate the
> problem and then bring to the attention of the samba-team how to
> demonstrate the problem. We will drop everything to fix any significant
> problem - and nothing is more important than data integrity.

Ok, if it happens again, I'll try to reproduce it and let you know!
But I haven't seen it happen in a ***long*** time. And it was not
ever a frequent or easily-reproduced kind of thing to start with.

> Are you installing multiple protocols?

No, just running TCP/IP here.

Jay Ts