[Discuss] Samba4

[bill at horne.net (Bill Horne)]

On 1/27/2012 8:05 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> ... it does raise the question of whether it is still a wise recommendation
> ... to be deploying Samba.
>
> When I first started using Samba I thought it was a fantastic idea, and
> I though the old-school UNIX guys that disparaged it were just being
> anti-Microsoft, but after using it for a decade I came to view it as a
> mess of a protocol with an unreliable and insecure authentication model.

I agree. The protocol isn't pretty, and the security is insecure. But, 
that's the fate of any designer confronted with an existing, well 
established system: use what you can, improve what you can, make it work 
as best you can.

> I'm sure with enough care and feeding it can be coerced into behaving
> well, but my experience with small scale deployments is that I've
> inevitably ran into unexplainable situations where share security had to
> be relaxed in order to accomplish what was needed. I've never had that
> experience with NFS. And that's not even getting into performance
> comparisons.

I'm not an expert on NFS, so I won't compare SAMBA to NFS. It's not 
necessary, anyway.  SAMBA is a bridge between dissimilar architectures, 
and as such, it has to deal with the faults of both. To be sure, the 
permissions are complicated and confusing, and having two password files 
is a PITA, and there are lots of ways to think about its limitations. 
But, giving the need to integrate Windoze-based PCs into a LAN, while 
meeting ever-tighter budgets for back-office functions, SAMBA remains a 
useful tool
.
> Of course it isn't fair to simply compare NFS to Samba, as Samba also
> encompass name resolution and network-based authentication, but these
> only make the situation more complicated, and the inevitable failures
> harder to diagnose.
>
> Would you choose to deploy Samba on a newly setup network?

Yes. It's imperfect, but it's avaiable, tested, and reliable. When I 
have to get traffic to flow between the rock of Redmond and the hard 
place of a "I can't afford that" customer, it's what bridges the gap.
> Have your experiences with Samba been different?

No, they've matched most other users experiences: frustration,  and 
wondering if there will ever be a better choice. It's not a perfect 
tool, but it's what I've got in the toolbox. Every time I set it up, I 
recall my father's advice to a young plumber's apprentice who agonized 
over every strand of Oakum: "They don't pass us to get it perfect. They 
pay us to get it done."

Bill

-- 
Bill Horne
339-364-8487