[Samba] Samba v3.0.23a BROKE my network

[John H Terpstra]

Chris,

I feel your pain and share your concerns. Additionally, I appreciate the fact 
that you have spoken up.  Now that you have spent so much energy in creating 
awareness of the problems, could we possibly tempt you to help solve the 
documentation problem while the issue is still fresh in your memory and while 
you may still have a clear sense of where someone in your shoes might search 
in the HOWTO to find a solution.

Please would you prepare and submit documentation updates that will fix the 
problem you so clearly understand is there? Please would you help us to save 
other poor souls from the pain you went through.

Feel free to email your documentation changes directly to me at 
<jht at samba.org>. I am keen to help you to fix this part of the problem.

Cheers,
John T.

On Thursday 25 January 2007 03:28, Chris Hall wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 you wrote
>
> >Not that I don't understand your frustration. I do.
>
> Well, yes I'm venting a little.
>
> But more importantly, as a software developer, I think there are repeat
> lessons here on how to write good software.  And my objective is/was to
> offer good user perspective feed back.
>
> > I guess it boils down to whether I would prefer the developers
> >concentrate on fixing bugs and improving functionality or for them to
> >expend energy on helping prevent me from doing something bad that goes
> >against best practices. I overwhelmingly prefer the former.
>
> I wonder how many other people were tripped up by this.
>
> It may well be that mapping certain (or even all) groups was best
> practice.  But prior to v3.0.23 things seemed to work OK without.
>
> The software was changed so that it no longer worked unless certain
> groups are mapped.  A small piece of configuration changed from being
> optional to being essential.
>
> Volker Lendecke said:
>
>    We have it made very explicit that there are big changes
>    coming with this release.
>
> There was a long piece in the release notes around the issue.  (Which
> didn't directly say "you need these groups to be mapped", but that's
> another story.)
>
> The change in the importance of group mapping is so significant that a
> whole chapter in the HOWTO is given over to repeating the that piece of
> release note.
>
> The HOWTO does say that it is (now) essential to map these groups.
>
> So, this is not a small change.
>
> So, principles of defensive programming call for the software to detect
> the (now) incomplete configuration and (at the very least) produce an
> error message.
>
> [testparm doesn't spot the configuration problem, either.  It does
> whinge about 'printer admin' being deprecated, which seems a relatively
> minor issue !  I wonder if the required group mappings should be part of
> smb.conf...]
>
> >If someone out there has the wherewithal to write some kind of upgrade
> >checker that has the functionality you desire, I hope they come forward
> >and do so. Otherwise, I'm content for the developers to keep doing what
> >they are doing and focus on getting Samba 4 ready for prime time. But
> >that's just me and I can't speak for anyone else.
>
> OK.  If Samba 4 does what v3.0.23 just did -- fail to complain about
> missing bits of essential configuration, and go on to fail to work
> without giving much of a clue as to why -- then it will never be ready
> for prime time.
>
> IMO this is a repeat of the lesson that a few lines of code are worth
> hundreds of lines of documentation.  And the corollary: if you need to
> write lots of lines of documentation to warn or to explain, then maybe
> you should go back and fix the software instead.
>
> I'll go away, now.
>
> Chris
>
> >Chris Hall wrote:
> >> On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 you wrote
> >>
> >>> No offense,
> >>
> >> None taken.
> >>
> >>> but making any software update or change to a production system
> >>>without first testing it in a test environment is an administrative
> >>>issue, not a software issue.
> >>
> >> That could have reduced my users' blood pressure...
> >>
> >> ...but doesn't change my opinion that software should be written to
> >>avoid obscure failure caused by obvious misconfiguration --
> >>particularly in the case of an upgrade which turns a previously
> >>working configuration into a broken one !
> >>
> >>> It isn't terribly difficult to configure a test environment that
> >>>would allow you to see if everything works as expected.
> >>
> >> Sure.  But I'm not trying to run a nuclear power station here.
> >>
> >> Chris
>
> ....snip....
> --
> Chris Hall   @ Home                                         +44 (0)7970 277
> 383