[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#462046: samba: root is a valid user

[Anand Kumria]

Package: samba
Version: 3.0.28-2
Severity: normal

Hi,

I've now spent a very frustrating amount of time[1] trying to diagnose a
failure to add a machine to a domain. The problem is that root is marked
is an 'invalid user', which does not allow it add machines.

I am at a loss to understand why root is marked as an 'invalid user' in
the default shipped configuration. It does not make things any more
secure. It does cause extra work (everyone who wants root to be valid
has to modify the configuration; everyone who wants to some other user
must modify things; everyone who want privileges has to modify the
configuration) -- every class of user has to modify the configuration,
for standlone servers they are negatively nor positively impacted by
having "invalid user = root" in the configuration.

Please remove "invalid users = root" from the default configuration.

Thanks,
Anand

[1]: Joining a domain is such an uncommon operation, (for me, every 5 -
10 months) that I tend to forget what the fix is/was. Invariably I'm on
a new machine and things are failing. I've wasted at least 30 hours of
my life debugging this misconfiguration.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (650, 'testing'), (600, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.23-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages samba depends on:
ii  adduser               3.105              add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.18             Debian configuration management sy
ii  libacl1               2.2.45-1           Access control list shared library
ii  libattr1              1:2.4.39-1         Extended attribute shared library
ii  libc6                 2.7-6              GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcomerr2            1.40.4-1           common error description library
ii  libcupsys2            1.3.5-1            Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libgnutls13           2.0.4-1            the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libkrb53              1.6.dfsg.3~beta1-2 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries
ii  libldap2              2.1.30.dfsg-13.5   OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libpam-modules        0.99.7.1-5         Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam-runtime        0.99.7.1-5         Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii  libpam0g              0.99.7.1-5         Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpopt0              1.10-3             lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii  logrotate             3.7.1-3            Log rotation utility
ii  lsb-base              3.1-24             Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  procps                1:3.2.7-5          /proc file system utilities
ii  samba-common          3.0.28-2           Samba common files used by both th
ii  update-inetd          4.27-0.6           inetd.conf updater
ii  zlib1g                1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-10  compression library - runtime

samba recommends no packages.

-- debconf information excluded