[Discuss] Samba4

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 01/27/2012 10:34 PM, Bill Horne wrote:
> 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."
>
I have a NAS system at work that I use both NFS to the Linux servers and
Samba for Windows. What is really messy is that because of the
Unix/Linux permission scheme, I had to use Linux user and group IDs, but
I had to use Windows user names. Fortunately we are a relatively small
office and most of us used to use the same Windows and Linux user names
(our IBM names are different).

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
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