[Samba] samba Digest, Vol 131, Issue 16

Rob Janssen rob at ision.nl
Fri Nov 15 12:18:43 MST 2013


samba-request at lists.samba.org wrote:
> Subject:
> Re: [Samba] empty password
> From:
> trentbuck at gmail.com (Trent W. Buck)
> Date:
> 11/15/2013 02:29 AM
>
> To:
> samba at lists.samba.org
>
>
> Rob Janssen<rob at ision.nl>  writes:
>
>>> >>WARNING: The "null passwords" option is deprecated
>> >I cannot find the new option to achieve this.
>> >How is it supposed to be configured to not be flagged as "deprecated"?
> Only Samba developers can undeprecate Samba features.
>
>      https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deprecate
>
>      2. (computing) To declare something obsolescent; to recommend
>         against a function, technique, command, etc. that still works but
>         has been replaced.
>
> That warning is saying "null passwords work right now, but we plan to
> remove them in the future, so you'd better think of another way to do
> whatever it is you're doing."
>
> You might be able to suppress the warning.
> If so, I don't know how.
>

I know the general meaning, but I hoped the feature being removed is the "null passwords"
configuration item, e.g. because its name was decided to be not clear or there has been
added a new configuration option which has a broader scope.

I certainly hope there is no plan to remove this functionality.  I think the decision to allow an
account without password should be up to the admin of the system, not the developers of
the software.   In my case (and probably in a lot of other cases) I have a good use for such
an account, of course with very limited access, and I do not generally allow users to set an
empty password.  Note that an empty password can be set (by the admin only) by temporarily
setting the password options to minimum length 0, and that this can be raised after that.

I am not only concerned about the warning, but also the future implications.
(i.e. that the server can no longer perform its function after installing a newer revision of samba)

Rob


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