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Tridgell Taking Samba Beyond POSIX
dW writes "The Australian hacker has been working on pushing Samba beyond the POSIX world and figuring out what work needs to be done to get Samba to support new filesystems such as XFS, ext3, and Storage Tank. The answer is nothing less than a complete rewrite of Samba's smbd code, which has become his latest pet project. Here's an interview with Andrew Tridgell on his latest Samba rewrite."
They way I'm reading this support for things like XFS/ext3 etc is that samba will implment things such as native ACL's and such like. However I can help but wonder how these will be preserved if say the server is XFS and the Client FAT. The only think I can think of is some sort of file which stores it as Metadata. Of course if it was XFS -> ext3 then you might be able to convert to the native setup but it might be buggy and subject to the filesystem formats changing
Rus
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Yeah NFS is a better system. However in defense of MS they have document SMB (aka CIFS) so people can understand it. However virtually every other recent OS has support for NFS so it would be nice if MS included native support rather than just in their UNIX Tools which are cost extras
Rus
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Samba's existence is vastly important to the adoption by corporate management of perceived 'alternate' computing systems (i.e., Linux, Mac, sometimes Unix, as opposed to Windows) in the datacenter. The simple fact that there exists an easy-to-use, open source method of interconnecting disparate file systems, allowing multiple OS co-existance, is often the lynchpin in convincing managers to permit non-Windows systems to be deployed in a company. I have worked in several situations where employees have wanted to use Mac OSX desktops or Linux/Unix servers (etc.) in an all-Windows shop, and managers balked at the idea until they were convinced that data could still be exchanged, and that the 'alternative' OS'es could still 'talk' to the Windows machines.
With this established managerial behavior in mind, isn't it interesting that IBM would have hired Samba's creator outright, to work on a project which furthers Samba's ability to communicate with additional operating systems? Samba in many ways is a 'license to change' computers in a datacenter for IT staff. IBM has positioned itself to pump funding directly into the Samba project, as well as to have a say in which file systems it supports; this gives IBM the ability to write its own ticket in terms of promoting its disparate filesystem architectures' usage in the datacenter, alongside their Windows brethren.
Who's working on polishing up that ActiveDirectory and Kerberos stuff so I can continue to use my samba based PDC with WinXP.
It's neat that he's extending the SMB protocol to support some more of the native features of the underlying filesystems.
But I'd wager the lions share of it's user base want samba to replace/supplement Win2k Server, and soon Win2003.
This always happens in open source. Projects get pulled in a new direction before they're completed. Developers always want to work on neat stuff and get bogged down in the academics, and it doesnt produce a truly functional result.
There's nothing that can be done about it, it's his time, his decision. Still, it sure would be nice for samba to be a full member of a Windows 2000 domain.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The parent poster writes:
else I'll be using NFS which is a much better protocol in every area.
Er, yes... like how NFS relies on the hostname for security, while SMB/CIFS relies on a password.
NFS is as (in)secure as the r* commands (rlogin, rcp, rsh). It relies on the client to authenticate the user, and the server only trusts certain clients (or anything pretending to be certain clients).
Now I'll admit, a good firewall should keep NFS safe. Under certain setups, even a good router should be enough. However, I prefer to think of a firewall as one layer of security - not my first, last, and only line of defense.
Although I'm not currently using it, AFS/Code seems to be a cross platform (win, mac, unix) secure replacement to NFS.
NFS might be a better protocol then SMB/CIFS in certain areas, but for security, SMB/CIFS wins (even the old versions of SMB that rely on plaintext passwords).
Actually, no- I'd rather have cross-platform file locking. Correct me if things have changed since 2000 when samba and netatalk developers were "thinking" about this problem, but...
It is a HUGE problem that netatalk, Samba, NFS, and the system itself don't share common file-locking, and some file-based applications like Visual Source Safe(still used by many shops) -require- file locks be across all the shares; if you don't have it, you run a serious chance of screwing things up.
WinNT/Win2k with Services for Macintosh is the only server I know of capable of cross-platform locking, and that is pathetic...
Please help metamoderate.
Many opensource projects started out trying to emulate some other protocol, then overtook it and grabbed the lead.. then the proprietary protocol had to follow.
Samba is in a similar position. I think there are improvements to be made, efficiency, authentication, virutualhosts?(multiple domains/workgroups/subnets with the same daemon), better filesystem support, changes in the protocol making it faster, more efficient and unbreakable etc.
If Andrew can release improvements to samba for say win9x, 2000 and xp, replacing some networking DLLS,or just replacing microsoft network client, samba can be in a real leader position. MS SMB code is deinitely buggy or just inefficient, even on one subnet with 8 hosts. Improve that, release the improvement as GPL, and people will flock to it. Best form of marketing of Linux I can think of. OSSphobics will have no way out.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
..."Although I'm not currently using it, AFS/Code seems to be a cross platform (win, mac, unix) secure replacement to NFS."
AFS, or OpenAFS is not -only- a replacement for NFS it is way over NFS in terms of security and scalability. If you aren't using a global namespace filesystem, then you can't actually call yourself knowledgeable of system administration. The only replacement for AFS that is even close is Microsoft's "Win2k AD'd dfs", and even it is missing a large number of features that AFS has.
I'm rather shocked that people don't use global namespace network filesystems for data storage and application servers. The redundancy is excellent.
And, since AFS can be modularly seperated from the authentication system and client OS, it makes for an excellent tool for system upgrades.
Just my 2 cents.