[Samba] Why would nsswitch.conf be needed at all ?

[Frederic Olivie]

> On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 04:47:48PM +0100, Frederic Olivie wrote:
> 
> > So, why would samba ever need to control that the system is able to
> > do this mapping when everything happens internally (sending a job to
> > cups is certainly not a case in which a usernam/uid mapping is
> > usefull. It would only be if one chooses to use lprm from a shell
> > under one of the domain users) ?
> 
> It does if you want users to be able to manipulate their print jobs, no?

No. They manipulate their print jobs from the XP boxes. And these access the print queue through samba which already has this mapping through winbind.

I just don't understand why I would have to mix the two namespaces.

When you have an LDAP authentication system for your postfix+cyrus, you don't need to resort to system users (because that's what it's all about, virtually adding your whole AD users base inside your /etc/passwd file).

The job is passed to another subsystem (cups in this case) which does not need system users either. It trusts the username passed as an argument.

The interest in messing up with system users is when you use the samba as a file server and render the files accessible through another mean on the unix side (locally in a shell or remotely in NFS for example). In this case, both users bases have to be in accordance.

In my case, I just don't see why.

But if samba is made this way, there is not a lot I can do about it unless I stick my nose inside of it, right ? :-)