[Samba] Samba and LDAP backend - howto docs problems?

John H Terpstra jht at samba.org
Wed Mar 10 15:27:56 GMT 2004


On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, Graham Leggett wrote:

> RRuegner wrote:
>
> > Hi, yes the tools should be better described as they are in the smb sources
> > i found it very hard at my first setup ldap smb.
> > On the other Hand many setups are thinkable with ldap, a description
> > to the ldap populate is only one way  ( fast , working )
> > to come to a working smb ldap pdc
>
> The LDAP capability is very useful, which is why I am trying to solve
> the problems, but the lack of usability is a complete showstopper. I
> cannot install a system that if something goes wrong in six months time,
> nobody will have a clue on how to fix it.
>
> I have been looking at the smbldap-tools package, and cannot believe at
> how difficult it is to set up. Most of the information in the
> smbldap_conf.pm file is already specified in the smb.conf file - this
> means that down the line when somebody else changes smb.conf, things
> will stop working, and they won't know why.
>
> The functionality provided by smbldap-tools should be built into Samba
> from scratch, I don't see why there is such a need to jump through hoops
> like this.

I agree completely! I know exactly what you mean. I have spent litterally
12 months writing Samba documentation. That has been my full time (and I
mean about 18 hours per day) activity for the past year - and that is why
you have the documentation that exists now. It would not have existed if
someone had not written it.

My main source of income for this work is from book sales, but I have also
contributed it under the GPL to the Samba project. I am committed to open
source and hope that users like you will help to ensure that this work can
continue. How can you do that?

	1. Contribute written text that can be added to improve the
	documentation further.

	2. Buy the book versions to support the documentation work.
	It helps those who write documentation to eat. :)

FWIW:

I am working with the authors of several tools projects (smbldap-tools and
LDAP Account Manager) to improve the documentation of their work also.
Bear in mind that those of you using this stuff are at the leading edge.
It takes more time than you can imagine to document and improve these
tools.

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


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