[Pkg-samba-maint] SerNet samba4wins packages [Re: [Fwd: Re: samba4wins and debian]]

[Michael Adam]

Hi Christian, list!

I did not manage to reply earlier - sorry for that!

On Thu, Nov 02, 2006 at 06:12:05PM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > I have already created an account (obnox-guest) on alioth and
> > requested membership in the pkg-samba group (by hitting the
> > appropriate button and dropping a comment to the admin).
> > As suggested by Christian Perrier, I do now also mail to this list
> > concerning this issue. For your reference, I forward the initial
> > mail conversation with Christian and Bjoern.
> 
> Could you introduce us to samba4wins? Speaking only for myself, I'm
> afraid that my knowledge about it probably needs to be updated...:-)

Let me try:

=======

The samba4WINS project provides a full featured WINS server for UNIX.

WINS (Windows Internet Naming Service) is a service that
dynamically maintains a list of (Netbios) names. Clients can ask
a WINS server for names by packets directed to this server direclty
as opposed to the usual broadcast packets for netbios name
resolution. Thus, WINS on the one hand speeds up netbios name
resolution and makes browsing more stable and reliable, and on
the other hand makes it available across subnet broders (broadcast
domains). 

Samba 3 can act as a WINS server, but it does not support the
replication protocols of native Windows WINS servers. Thus, if
samba 3 acts as an WINS server, there may be only one...

samba4WINS is a spin-off of the samba4 development branch. Samba 
Team Member (and SerNet employee) Stefan Metzmacher has completed 
the WINS replication code in Samba4 and assembled it into a software
package of its own. (It is the Samba4 WINS server.) 

Once Samba 4 is available, which ist still some considerable time in
the future, this this functionality will also be available in the
Samba suite.

Note that samba4wins can also replicate itself with Windows WINS
server (nt4, win2k, win2k3)!

samba4wins can run in parallel on a samba3 server (using a different
IP address and netbios name). The samba4wins daemon is called
smbd4wins. It is configured through a configuration file
/etc/samba4wins/samba4wins.conf that has the same syntax as the
smb.conf for samba3.

See http://ftp.sernet.de/pub/samba4WINS/samba4wins-1.0.5-HOWTO.txt
for a technical documentation of how to configure samba4wins.

=======

I hope that this roughly was, what you expected. If not, please
let me know... :-)


> Apart from that, I think that filing a ITP (Intent to Package) bug
> report should be done (see packages.debian.org, IIRC, for instructions
> about the "right" way to include new packages in Debian).
 
I just filed an ITP. I am now waiting for a bug number and will post it,
as soon as I have it.

> Not sure that samba4wins will make it for Etch, though, as we are
> completely in a release mood right now. But nothing prevents you from
> trying...

OK, here we go...

Cheers, Michael

-- 
Michael Adam,  SerNet Service Network GmbH
phone: +49-551-370000-0,  fax: +49-551-370000-9