Custom named pipes

[jra at dp.samba.org]

On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 02:48:15PM +0100, David Lee wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Sep 2002 gerryjacobs at tiscali.be wrote:
> 
> > I'm trying to create a linux application which creates a named pipe on
> > which a windows machine should connect to.  I checked out the
> > smbd/nttrans.c and noticed that a static known_nt_pipes array is used. 
> > This array contains all the pipe names which are created by the samba
> > server.  Is it possible to add a dynamic array in which you can add
> > custom made pipes (eg. via smb.conf)? 
> 
> > I can hack the code for myself. But I can hardly believe that I'm the
> > only one who need this.  The smbd process should then write the incoming
> > data from a 'Windows Named Pipe' to a 'Unix Named Pipe' or keep it
> > somewhere in a buffer file, which should be read out by a ReadNamedPipe
> > api. This ReadNamedPipe api should be located in the libsmbclient
> > library. 
> > 
> > or...
> > 
> > am I moving too fast and is there already somewhere in the samba code an
> > api which can be called from an external program to create a (server)
> > named pipe? 
> 
> This sounds related to an idea which we have discussed a couple of times
> this year, but in a different context.  Namely, an smbd could have an
> associated named-pipe on UNIX, so that writes to that named-pipe would be
> translated into WinPopup messages for the client PC .  (I further
> suggested that if this pipe were "/dev/smb/<n>", as per utmp, that
> standard UNIX utilities such as "wall" and "write" could be used to send
> messages (WinPopup) to the client PC.) 

Someone at IBM has almost finished the "loadable named pipes" code,
they told us about it at the CIFS conference. We're just waiting for
the code to be released.

Jeremy.