[Samba] Does anyone think a mini-Samba server would be useful?

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Wed, 2013-07-24 at 11:19 -0700, Paul D. DeRocco wrote:
> I'm working on a couple of Yocto Project based embedded projects, one using
> a Gumstix Overo board and the other using an Intel Atom motherboard. Both
> need a simple Samba server, which isn't included in the standard build. The
> only existing Yocto-compatible recipe for Samba is an OpenEmbedded one for
> version 3.6.8. I was quite surprised to find that adding Samba almost
> tripled the size of my Atom build. I understand that version 4 is quite a
> bit smaller, but we're still talking many tens of megabytes of stuff.
> 
> I would think there would be lots of people in my boat, who are doing
> embedded systems and who would like to include a really simple SMB file
> server. For instance, a data acquisition system needs to record large
> amounts of data to a local disk, and then provide access to it over a
> network so people can bring it into Matlab or other tools. A CNC machine
> tool system needs a way to have Gerber or other files loaded into them. A
> media server needs to be able to serve up video or audio files. Any embedded
> device needs to have a way of being fed configuration data, or having its
> firmware upgraded.
> 
> The requirements for such a system are much smaller than what Samba
> provides:
> 
> * It only needs to serve files, not printers or other resources.

> I wonder if there's a way to build such a mini-Samba out of the existing
> Samba code base. It's certainly way above my abilities, but it may be
> something that someone on the Samba team could do without mounting a major
> development effort. How many other people would find such a system useful?

One thing we have found when developing Samba is that very quickly we
find that one thing depends on another.  It isn't easy to 'just do the
basics'.  Indeed, the AD DC isn't actually that large, compared with so
much else that we need.

That isn't to say that for example printing comes free - and I think
there even is an option to disable that code - but a 'cut down samba'
isn't free either.  Much of the bulk comes from library code we have
come to depend on across the whole sever.

Andrew Bartlett
-- 
Andrew Bartlett
http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT                   http://catalyst.net.nz