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Learn from Samba-Man Jeremy Allison
Jeremy is a leading Samba maintainer, and therefore one of the world's leading experts on Samba, which is often held up (along with Apache and the Gimp) as a sterling example of efficient and useful Open Source development. In the interest of full disclosure, we must mention that Jeremy is now employed by VA Linux, but that his primary responsibility is still Samba, just as it was when he worked for SGI. Look for Jeremy's answers to your questions within the next week.
Jeremy, first, a BIG thank you for your work,
I am sure you could lay a pizza-track from Earth
to Jupiter by now with the money you saved people
who would have had to buy Windows NT-Server.
The issue of reverse-engineering has become a
very *hot* issue recently with the advent of
CSS source-code to authenticate DVD-ROMs and
also descramble the content. My questions:
- How much reverse engineering went into the SMB
and WINS protocols, in contrast to real coding,
say up to the first usable share exported from
a Unix machine?
- Did you peek under Microsoft's hood and examine
some VXDs or NT kernel drivers to get to those
last and hardest 10% of insight?
- How important do you think is the roll-out of
working PDC-code?
- Finally, on the law side of things, there is a
German law that explicitly allows reverse
engineering for the purpose of interworkability.
What has been YOUR legal situation (being "down
under"), has Microsoft ever asked you to stop
your work (BEFORE they needed it in their DOJ
case), or even threaten you with legal action
or a life-time supply of pizza?
Thanks so much,
Stephan Eisvogel
eisvogel(at)hawo.stw.uni-erlangen.de
Samba? Samba? That word says one thing to me, and one thing only: Some slinky disreputable Latin American gigolo character, skulking around the suburbs and worming his way into the hearts of virtuous women, destroying their lives and moving on. The word "samba" says nothing to me of quality or reliability. Nothing.
So Jeremy, I ask you: Why do you choose to be associated with such a grossly disreputable and frankly immoral product? Why do you choose to spend your days lazing around the Beverly Wilshire, oiling your pencil-thin mustache, langorously sipping mai-tai's and attempting to seduce other men's wives? Aren't you disgusted with yourself and the low state to which you've fallen?
Have you no shame?
What are the plans for ACL support? I mean the stuff that comes up when you do (in NT) Properties, that second tab, then the Permissions button and get the list of users and groups. Right now we can mess with the existing user and group, but adding people fails.
Will this tie in with the Linux patch to add POSIX ACLs, or will it happen above that layer in a file Samba maintains?
The possibility exists for me to subvert W2K at my place of business if Samba can do this for my users. I hope this happens soon.
I have been out of the loop for a very long time, but was wondering how things a going with the VFS stuff and if anybody else has picked up on it. The possibilities are endless. One could "share" FTP sites, databases, tape drives, archives (tar, gz, zip) to the masses who use Windows clients while keeping them in the familiar surroundings of the Windows Explorer filemanager.
What are the plans for VFS in SAMBA?
Keep up the good work.
Do you work on SAMBA for the thrill of the challenge of reverse engineering SMB or just for the practical uses? If MicroSoft were to open their protocols (perhaps as part of a DoJ settlement), would you still find it as much fun?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Now that Windows 2000 can use a basterized version of LDAP vs. the undecriptable SAM, does it become any more feasible to have Access Control Lists (ACL) work from Unix? What are your feelings on the "extenstions" that Microsoft made to the LDAP spec - are they insurmountable to decode?
With the release of Windows2000 we saw the introduction of a new computer, user, group managment system. Microsoft included some ability to be backwards compatible with WindowsNT Servers, Microsoft also included the ability to run Windows2000 in "native mode." which effectivly disallows any NT client/server from participating in it's user management. How will this affect Samba? Will Samba include Windows2000 "native mode" support, also will the AD tools used to administer a Windows2000 Server be able to administer a Samba server?
I am currently in the process of writing a university-level report for a course I am taking. The topic of the report will be SMB vs. NFS. I am not trying to identify a clearly "surperiour" protocol, I am seeking rather to simply present as much detailed facts/benefits of each and have the reader decide for themselves.
Obviously you would be an ideal person to ask about this topic. What are your feelings as to the advantages SMB has over NFS, if any, and how could the benefits of NFS, if any, be carried over into SMB?
I am continually amazed each time a major release of Samba comes out how well it works. My question is, I know that the Samba group has been working towards make Samba a suitable replacement for NT. How far do you expect that to go. I know you're in a continual battle with MS changing things with every minor release, but do you expect to someday get to the point where I can completely replace my NT PDC machine with a Unix/Linux box that has the same functionality?
Perhaps the same question stated differently is what are the long term goals for the project in relation to NT PDC Server compatibility?
Any estimates on how long such compatibility will take?
Thanks again for all the hard work!!