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Interview with Andrew Tridgell

Jeremy Allison - Sam writes "See here for a *great* interview with tridge. My favourite quote: 'In 50 years' time I doubt anyone would have ever heard of Samba, but they'll probably be using rsync in one way or another,' Tridgell says. Cheers, Jeremy."

9 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Re:i want this sequence by budcub · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmmm, maybe he discovered the "SMB-die" attack.

  2. wasn't one of the developers by geekoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    for rsync suppose to go to the space station?

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    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  3. More Important Question by Raul654 · · Score: 5, Funny

    How long until someone patents it as a device for fixing Windows security problems?

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    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  4. Thank You. by DigitalAdrenaline · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd just like to say a REALLY big thank you for the time and effort you've spent working on Samba. It has been a huge benefit to me both personally and professionally, and I am taking this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude.

    Andrew, thanks for envisioning this project, and getting up all started. Thanks also to your wife for putting up with it, I'm not sure mine would have :)

    The developer list is growing, and I've never even read messages from some from some of you, but it's worth taking the time to personally express thanks as individually as this forumn allows.

    Jeremy Allison
    Andrew Tridgell
    John Terpstra
    Chris Hertel
    John Blair
    Gerald Carter
    Michael Warfield
    Brian Roberson
    Jean Francois Micouleau
    Simo Sorce
    Andrew Bartlett
    Motonobu Takahashi
    Jelmer Vernooij
    Richard Sharpe
    Eckart Meyer
    Herb Lewis
    Dan Shearer
    David Fenwick
    Paul Blackman
    Volker Lendecke
    Alexandre Oliva
    Tim Potter
    Matt Chapman
    David Bannon
    Steve French
    Jim McDonough
    *Luke Leighton
    *Elrond
    *Sander Striker

    Thank You. You have done a great service for us all, and we are very much in your debt.

    Kevin Anderson

  5. Re:In 50 years, I doubt many will know what Unix i by m0rph3us0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    UNIX doomsday, this only applies to 32-bit integers if you recompile your code with time as a 64-bit integer (like on 64-bit processors) then the 32 bit integer which represents time as seconds since circa 1970, will last for 70 ish years, however a 64 bit integer can store 2^32 times more numbers, meaning it will last for 70 * (2^32) years. So as long as all UNIX machines are on 64 bit processors by 2038, doomsday will be avoided until the year 300647712690. In other words approx. 280 billion years. Given that we estimate that the universe is approaching its mid life crisis, 64 bits should keep time for 9.3 universe life times. I have a feeling my math may be a bit off can someone double check this for me. I do know that 64 bit UNIX time will last for a the forseeable future.

  6. Re:Back to life... Back to reality by William+Tanksley · · Score: 5, Informative

    You don't know what you're talking about.

    Samba isn't developed my Microsoft; SMB is. And the problems SMB solves are fading even now; in 50 years there's no way that SMB will be useful. Microsoft will have moved on to something else.

    And, of course, rsync isn't part of the rlogin/rsh/rwhatever toolset. It's completely independant.

    The reason that rsync might still be used is that it implements a really powerful algorithm to do its job, which is being adopted in many cutting-edge projects. I don't know if those cutting-edge projects will have relatives which are still in use in 50 years, but they have more of a chance than Samba.

    -Billy

  7. Not just Microsoft... by Jacco+de+Leeuw · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Years ago I stumbled into a bug in OS/2 Warp 4. I got the SMB networking process to crash after a sequence of smbclient commands.

    So I downloaded a bug report form from the IBM website, filled in all details and sent it off. After a while I got a response. I could not make heads or tails of it. It was in some kind of IBM speak. (IBM speak really exists. Do they still call a harddisk a "hard file"? :-)

    So I forwarded the message to Timothy Sipples, who had been very active on Usenet and had just started working for IBM. He translated it for me: I was not a big account customer so they would not accept the bug report. Sigh...

    Soon after that, Linux became my main OS.

    (I actually made a patch for smbclient so that it would not kill OS/2, but I never forwarded it to the Samba people).

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    Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
  8. rsync by dnoyeb · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have never heard of rsync, but I have a samba PDC in my basement. I'm not any hotrod Linux hacker or anything. My wife asked me how come she didnt see the same favorites on both computers?

    I made it so.
    I'm a good husband.

    Besides, these things are not just toys right? It was damn easy. Buying as much as an NT server still costs no less than $500 on ebay. samba cost about 5 minutes in FTP to get the latest for RedHat. On my K6-233 Asus tx97x its flawless. Flawless i say.

    Ramble on.

    Everytime I login I feel a little geekdom. Everytime my wife *doesen't* complain about the computer I feel like THE MAN. You see in my house I am Bill Gates. If windows breaks, I get the blame. If Linux is too confusing, I get the blame. So what we have here is the best of both worlds. BTW, i used to get pissed at the IT department for taking so long to launch new OSes. Now I am about to take XP off my computer because its loosing faxes and the printer dont work on it, etc... Its affecting my love life ;)

  9. Re:Don't understand SMB...we'll do it for you! by SurfTheWorld · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Indeed. An often-times overlooked benefit of open-source is the exposure a product can attain simply by virtue of being open. A closed source product team has to make an investment in a quality assurance group, which usually works 9 - 5. An open source project (assuming it is highly visible) is capable of leveraging a global supply of quality assurance engineers to test their product 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The whole world is essentially their beta testers.

    While the Samba folks have done us Linux folk a tremendous favor (reverse engineering *any* protocol is difficult) in encapsulating all of the SMB details via Samba, they have also performed a huge service to MicroSoft and the rest of the closed-source world by hammering on the various platforms that come out of Redmond. As the article points out, every new version (or patch release) is put through it's paces against Samba. Although their primary goal is to ensure compatibility, the secondary effect is extremely valuable to non-Samba users: bugs in server software from a closed source vendor are exposed (and hopefully fixed).

    The difficulty is that the rest of the world (and probably MicroSoft in particular), either doesn't see, or see's but turns a cold shoulder none-the-less to the open source community.

    Thank you Andrew for your work and the work of your team.

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    Do it for da shorties