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

[Hamish]

AndyLiebman at aol.com wrote:
> 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. 
I dont mean to be nosy, but why would every user need a copy of 
smb.conf? Do they also run their own samba servers? It sounds like a 
very interesting setup you have - what is the program that makes your 
shares? Does it rewrite your smb.conf? Could you not just remove the 
line "include = smb.%U.conf"? That way they would still get the project 
share, and it would not matter about the customised smb.user.conf file.

PS I dont think duplicate entries in smb.conf will hurt. I just 
discovered a duplicate in one of our include confs, and it was not 
giving any errors. (include = %L.conf - for different netbios names) It 
seems that the "last read" one is the one that is used.
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