[Samba] Problem with Universal Groups

[Don Meyer]

At 09:26 PM 3/3/2006, Gerald (Jerry) Carter wrote:
>Don Meyer wrote:
> > As far as trying to at least get Domain Local group handling fixed in
> > winbind, I would suggest looking at Bug 3530 on bugzilla.samba.org.
> > The more people that can show similar failure cases, the more likely we
> > can convince them that this is a bug that needs fixing, and not a
> > "feature request".
>
>Don,
>
>Please allow me to clarify.  We are not ignoring this class of
>bugs.  We are simply saying that the issue is harder to fix that
>people realize.  It's not an issue of making enough noise
>for us to realize that there is a problem.  Volker already
>acknowledged that.  So rather than treating it as a simple bug
>to be fixed, we are trying to deal with the larger set of issues
>surrounding it.   Thanks for being patient.

Jerry,

I don't think the issue is patience.   Perhaps you (the samba team) 
have your own meaning assigned to each level in the system -- perhaps 
"feature enhancement" means something more to you internally than it 
does to us on the outside.

To me, the inconsistency between what the group membership reported 
via winbind and via the net command, alone, would be enough to rate a 
"bug" in ay of the development projects I am involved with.   My 
original severity rating as "major" was intended to indicate the 
level of impact this problem is having in our implementation, for 
lack of anything else to base the initial severity rating on.

When someone then gets told "closed - won't fix this", that is seen 
as a dismissal.  ("Go away, find another solution...")  When one is 
told that this is not a bug, but a feature enhancement, this too is 
seen as a dismissal -- albeit to a slightly lesser degree.   From the 
outside looking in, it appears that the team does not recognize this 
as a problem.

If instead the response was: "yes, this inconsistency is a problem 
(bug) -- the causes however, are particularly insidious, and will 
take some major reworking and the fixing of contributory problems 
before we can properly address this.  This is going to take a while, 
so don't expect any progress on this soon."  This would have been 
closer to the point I think you are trying to make...

Also, documenting this as a known limitation in the interim might be 
helpful -- especially to others designing systems around Samba with 
the expectation that winbind group handling is the same as in W2K(3)...

Cheers,
-D


Don Meyer                                           <dlmeyer at uiuc.edu>
  Network Manager, ACES Academic Computing Facility
  Technical System Manager, ACES TeleNet Conferencing System
  Technical Lead, ACES Web Infrastructure
UIUC College of ACES, Information Technology and Communication Services

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