[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#496196: libpam-smbpass: package description overhaul

[Justin B Rye]

Steve Langasek wrote:
>> This is part of a set of related bugreports on the packages in the
>> Samba suite; I've already reported many of these issues (with some
>> suggested fixes) as a single bugreport on samba4 (see #486370), but
>> since that approach is a dud I'm trying the alternative of splitting
>> them up and targetting individual packages.
> 
> This should have been a single bug report against the samba package, not
> 14 separate bug reports!

I did consider it, even after I'd tried it with samba4, but this is
14 separate _sets_ of bugreports; you might agree with me on some
and not others.  Thanks, indeed, for the detailed consideration
below!

[...big snips...]

> a) Unix passwords are those passwords managed by the pam_unix module.

This is a way of looking at it that I hadn't considered.  Fair
enough.

In fact, the topic of (non-MS) OS names really shouldn't even need
to come up; Samba is for supporting mixed networks of Windows plus
anything else, and we shouldn't need to talk about the side we're
starting from.  This case of authentication systems is a slightly
different one, though. 

[...big snips...]
 
> Counter-suggestion:
> 
>  Description: pluggable authentication module for SMB password database
>   This is a module for PAM that enables a system administrator to migrate
>   user passwords from the Unix password database to the SMB password
>   database as used by Samba, and to subsequently keep the two databases in
>   sync.  Unlike other solutions, it does this without needing users to log
>   in to Samba using cleartext passwords, or requiring them to change their
>   existing passwords.
> 
> I don't particularly like the use of the term "SMB password database" (more
> accurate would be to call it an "NTLM password database"), but it's
> consistent with the upstream terminology for the moment.

I'm happy enough dropping the boilerplate para on libs, but I'm not
so sure about keeping that synopsis.  How about:

   Description: pluggable authentication module for Samba

This has the suite-name in place of a technical detail that's still
in the long description, and brings it down to five "password"s.
-- 
JBR
Ankh kak! (Ancient Egyptian blessing)