Samba won't dance [Solved - sort of]

[Claude Jones]

On Thursday April 17 2008 9:30:21 am Craig White wrote:
> I am a samba team member and I will say...
> ___________snip__________
>
> - samba has its own mail lists, the primary users list is very
> active and it appears that people on all Linux and UNIX
> installations have various configuration issues...it's not a
> Fedora thing.
>
> Fedora adds the complexity of SELinux but I think that is not
> a major hurdle.
>
> I'm glad you solved your problem

Unfortunately, no. Didn't know you were a samba team member, 
though I'm not sure what that means exactly. I assume it does 
mean that you know a lot more than I do, which was already clear 
from the interventions you've made in this thread. I don't doubt 
all the things you pointed out about its capabilities. I 
actually did download the huge manual and print it out in a 
previous attempt to fight through similar problems. 

I don't think there's a Samba problem, or a Fedora problem. I 
think there's a problem with getting Fedora to work in a 
reliable, simple fashion in an environment such as the one I 
typically have to be in, which is what I've described - a very 
basic network of mixed Windows and Linux boxes. I have tried 
distro after distro where it does just work, right out of the 
box. 

I just don't have the time to wade through that huge array of 
documentation that you cited, though I have tried to many times. 
In any case, it's almost never a purely Samba problem. There's a 
whole array of things that have to be working correctly with a 
Linux box on a network with Windows machines -- 

I suggest that users shouldn't have to try to parse a 1000+ page 
manual to get basic networking going - it can be made to work, 
simply, and out of the box. Many distros do it, and I've seen it 
time and time again. Nobody has explained yet why it doesn't 
with Fedora - I still consider it a weakness of the distro... I 
hope that people in the development teams who might read this 
don't take this as an attack - it's not, it's an observation, a 
critique. I hope I'm not coming across as a hysteric, or as 
angry, because I'm neither. 

-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD, USA