[Samba] Any danger in having two shares with same name?

[AndyLiebman at aol.com]

Hi, 

Don't ask why I'm posing this question -- actually, I WILL explain below -- 
but is there any danger in having two shares in Samba with the same name? 

Here's our situation. We have a bunch of production machines out in the 
field. On those machines, we are constantly setting up "special project shares" for 
each user (different from the user's Home directory) that refer to private 
directories only accessible by that user. We define those "special project 
shares" in a series of "smb.username.conf" files, where we also define which of 
hundreds of other shares are accessible to that user particular user. The whole 
process of setting up shares is highly automated from the point of view of the 
end user. 

By the way, we reference those "smb.username.conf" files in the general 
smb.conf file with the statement: 

include = smb.%U.conf

... so each user sees all the shares listed in their own "smb.username.conf" 
file as well as all the browseable shares listed in the general "smb.conf" 
file. 

This arrangement was working perfectly, until we were asked to turn some of 
the systems into Primary Domain Controllers and give hundreds of users roaming 
profiles. Our users now want the "special project share" for each user to be 
automatically mapped as the "P Drive" in Windows whenever a user logs on to a 
client system. 

However, we have found that Windows won't process any shares listed in the 
"smb.username.conf" directories while it executes the logon.bat script during 
log on. We know the logon.bat file IS being executed -- it syncs the client time 
with the server time, and it maps any shares we specify in the general 
smb.conf file. But it won't map any shares defined in those smb.username.conf files. 

Curiously, if we run the logon.bat file again about 10 seconds after log on 
has completed, it will map the shares listed in the smb.username.conf file!. 

As a workaround, we decided to take an alternate approach to defining the 
"special project shares". For each of the "special project shares" (that all 
users have) we put a listing in the general smb.conf file as follows: 

[Special Project Share A]
    Comment = Special Folder A
    path = /home/theboss/%U/Special Folder A
    read only = No
    write list = %U
    guest ok = Yes
    create mask = 0775
    directory mask = 0775
    

So now, we have two listings for "Special Project Share A" -- one in the 
user's smb.username.conf file, and one in the general smb.conf file. 

The question is, is there any danger of Samba or the Windows workstations 
getting confused? Each of these duplicate shares has the SAME NAME, and refers to 
the EXACT SAME DIRECTORY on the Linux box. And has the same access and 
read/write settings. It's probably the same as if you accidentally created the same 
share twice in your smb.conf file. 

I would love to hear from a knowledgeable authority on this. 

The best solution, of course, would be to stop defining the "Special Project 
Shares" in the user's "smb.username.conf" files. However, we would have to 
make many changes in the underlying program that is creating these shares and for 
the next few months it's not practical to update the programs on so many 
individual user's machines. It's much more practical to simply send out a new 
smb.conf file to every user. 

Regards, 
Andy Liebman