[Samba] Good Bye SAMBA?!?!?

[Klaus Hartnegg]

On 28.09.2016 at 01:31 Gilberto Nunes wrote:
> I am working harding for weeks to make things work properly to implement
> samba and glusterfs and ZFS , to deploy storage sincronization between two
> servers.
> Today I just install Windows 2012 R2 and play around with DFS  and see how
> so deadly simple!!!!
> And I wonder: why Linux or samba or both do not have similar tools to make
> things less painful....

This comment was clearly not a rant that samba has no GUI, as some have 
written here. It is a complaint that important functionality is either 
missing or does not work, and requires tedious workarounds.

This misunderstanding confirms my suspicion that most samba admins have 
no idea how easy and enormously useful DFS and DFS-R are (and that many 
may not want to keep using Samba it they would know).

On Windows servers I provide ALL shares via domain-based DFS, and 
replicate all directories with DFS-R to a second server. This is all 
very easy to setup and works just great. If one server was down, it 
quickly catches up, fully automatic, and without recursing through all 
directories. I can switch the users to the replica server just by 
running a small script that adjusts DFS priorities. This is wonderful, 
because it allows me to upgrade servers when I want, not when it fits 
the users, because there is no downtime.

But unfortunately some servers here are running Samba.

Tell a Windows admin that Samba is still unable to replicate its own 
Sysvol directory, and they will laugh at you. The docs say that 
domain-based DFS works for some. What does that mean? Does it work or 
does it not work? And which docs should I read? Samba still hosts docs 
that are so outdated that they cause more confusion than they provide 
help. How many years did it take to fix that tiny backup script to 
always use tdbbackup? Is it really correct now? Does it still need to be 
pulled from the source tarball? For Windows 10 I need to go back to 
protocol version 1, which Microsoft is about to disable by default. 
Whoa?!! For AD I must manually give all users a numerical ID? And the 
tab where this must be done is now going away! Are you joking? This 
means that things are getting worse instead of better. I must even 
seriously doubt the future of the whole project when it keeps depending 
on things that Microsoft has deprecated long ago and is about to expire. 
I had hoped that samba would eventually catch up a bit, but it rather 
feels like the distance to Microsoft is growing.

Sure, Samba does also have advantages, but it costs me way too much 
time. I need something that just works out of the box, and is not 
severly limited to the most basic functionality. Windows server 
eventually also needs scripts for things that should be included (like 
for example to tell whether DFS-R is currently in sync or not), but the 
level where this requirement starts is higher. And it is much easier to 
find the right commands and required options, because there is much 
better documentation.

sorry to disappoint you
Klaus