Samba won't dance [Solved - sort of]

[Claude Jones]

On Thursday April 17 2008 12:18:04 pm Craig White wrote:
> > 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.
>
> ----
> not at all...I recognize that there are a TON of configuration
> options with samba and many people simply don't want to wade
> through the documentation so I don't think your expectations
> are unique.
>
> I suppose that a list like this somewhat offers the option not
> to wade through their documentation but I hope you realize
> that you get what you pay for here...in other words,
> suggestions may or may not be useful...including suggestions
> from me.
>

I have no illusion about mail-lists, having been on them for 20 
years. You have to parse what you get, and be prepared for bad 
experiments, but, the number of times I've been helped vs 
hindered is a healthy positive number...

> If distribution A seems to work out of the box but
> distribution B doesn't it may mean that distribution A has
> chosen a better set of configuration defaults or in your case,
> it may have been as simple as firewall settings that block
> specific traffic which I think means that the distribution can
> hardly be blamed.
>

understood

> Also, some significant changes occurred to samba at 3.0.11 and
> 3.0.21 which impacted RHEL products when they finally upgraded
> rather than patching 3.0.9/3.0.10 on RHEL 4/5 respectively but
> Fedora tends to go with the latest versions of samba which can
> be troubling to people like you who expect their smb.conf from
> 3.0.4 days to continue to work without adjustment.
>

point taken

> I think if you consider how typical Windows installations
> work...server does not have any firewall/packet filtering
> turned on by default, workstations do not turn on file sharing
> by default but if you do turn on file sharing, you then have
> to adjust your firewall rules to allow 'Windows File and Print
> Sharing' to allow port 137/137/139/445 traffic through. Then
> in Win2K, WinXP Professional, the default workgroup is
> 'Workgroup' but in WinXP Home, it's 'MSHome' which causes all
> sorts of confusion. I think that in some respects, expecting
> sanity or default settings in samba to be universal is
> entirely unreasonable considering their target.

my workplace is 100% Windows (except for a private network I run 
right on our ouside connection), so I'm well versed in the 
vagaries of that world

I keep a Fedora server outside our firewall at work, with a 
little network behind it, patched into a few places around the 
plant, so I can bring up machines that are suspect outside the 
company lan and still have access to the net for various 
computer sanitation and medical needs

-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD, USA