[Samba] linux-schools samba ubuntu packages: it is just awful

[Rowland Penny]

On 15/11/2022 11:01, Michael Tokarev via samba wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> After several people (here and elsewhere) asked me about
> linux-schools ubuntu ppa with samba packages, I took a
> look at the thing.  And was rather shocked.
> 
> Basically, what they did was took the debian package of
> samba-4.15 (the one before the changes in samba which
> leads to quite significant changes in packaging), and
> REMOVED WHOLE PACKAGING from there.
> 
> The end result is that they have single new package
> named "samba4" with *everything* samba, and a lot of
> dummy empty packages for all subpackages which were
> in debian/ubuntu (client, winbind, pam, etc).
> 
> I'd say it is a package vandalism, so to say, it is
> a very hackish way to do things, it is ruining a
> distribution.  Why? Because other packages depend
> on, say, libsmbclient, - vlc, nautilus, whatever,
> but now libsmbclient is just an empty package which
> actually provides nothing. You install it instead
> of the real libsmbclient, and the packages which
> used libsmbclient.so just stop working with error
> "unable to load libsmbclient.so".  The result is
> a Big Mess (tm).
> 
> It is more: after installing this mess, it is quite
> difficult to roll it back into a normal system...
> 
> I'm not compelling with them, there's no single reason
> for me to do that - I mean, I'm writing this as someone
> who published real samba "ppa" on our site recently. I
> don't need to fight competitors - I gain nothing at all
> by publishing my repo or by doing debian packaging in
> the first place.
> 
> But I do want to warn ubuntu users strongly against using this
> schools samba ppa.  It is just an awful way to packaging.
> There's no reason to believe me, - just go take a look
> at their packages.
> 
> *SIGH*.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> /mjt
> 

I did wonder about Karoshi linux (that is what the Linux schools distro 
is called). They do some very strange things, such as:

They use DC's as fileservers, now I know that this is possible, but with 
multiple DC's and they do not seem to suggest using a Unix domain member 
as a fileserver etc.

They use nslcd on the DC's for ID's, which they obtain from idmap.ldb 
(yes, they use the xidNumbers in the 3000000 range for uidNumber & 
gidNumber attributes)

While they use multiple DC's and provide a gui to manage each, this 
appears to be on an individual DC basis, somehow combined with an SQL 
database (Hello, AD is a database).

All in all, it is a bit of a mess, so I am not surprised that their 
Samba packages are also a mess.

Rowland