[Samba] Samba and the new(ish?) Home Groups

Christ Schlacta lists at aarcane.org
Thu Feb 2 18:36:22 MST 2012


so Windows 7 (and the new Home Server) have supported this kinda new 
Home Groups feature for a while now.  I've been waiting a while now to 
update my samba servers to support Home Group joining.  So far I've 
heard nothing, seen nothing, read nothing, except for one article, which 
glosses over the technical details and says that the protocols are 
similar enough it should be easy.  Easy for who?  Not for me, I know 
nothing about smb or samba programming.  BUt apparently the 
documentation is there for someone to add it.
If there IS any existing information or work being done on this, I'd 
appreciate as much info as you can provide easily.  If there's not, I'd 
like to officially request that it be added to either Samba 3&4 or Samba 4.

I'd like to provide a little additional information about my use case.
I've got a samba 3 domain (I plan to upgrade to AD or samba 4 in the 
near future) that allows anyone in the house to log onto a few desktop 
computers in the common rooms (large family).  Laptops are configured to 
usually have the same user name and password that corresponds to the 
laptop's owner's domain password.  This works well enough, but I'd like 
to be able to specify certain shares and printers to be shared with the 
"Home Group" feature instead.  This would allow the majority of users to 
no longer need to synchronize their passwords, and to simplify 
deployment of common data shares and printers which are currently 
limited to "Anyone can use them so long as they have a password".  I've 
already got the network sufficiently secured that I'd like to expand 
that to "Any member of the home group".


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