[Pkg-samba-maint] Samba and an Enterprise track at Debconf10

[Christian PERRIER]

(restricting the CC to the useful part as Jelmer is subscribed to the
devel mailing list...and this list is used for samba and samba4. As
the list posting by non subscribers is allowed, I think this is OK for
this dicussion)

Quoting Sam Hartman (hartmans at debian.org):
> 
> 
> I've been asked to coordinate an Enterprise track at Debconf 10.
> I was wondering if there were any Samba related talks that  it would be
> worth giving.  Here are things I can think of:

Thanks, Sam, for working on this.

> 
> * How samba fits together with other components in Debian; for example
>   how Samba can facilitate using Kerberos apps by helping with domain
>   joins etc, how things like winbind fit together with the Debian
>   PAM/NIS infrastructure, etc.

I'm personnally deeply ignorant when it comes at Kerberos.

For other parts, my own experience is mostly about setups we have in
my own enterprise and the diificulties we have to keep NIS setups
consistent with Samba servers, particularly when it comes at
consistent UID management (I'm afraid I have a few Samba servers,
originally designed to be Samba-only, so built without caring about
UIDs....which become a huge PITA when finally integrated in a general
setup where they share files ny NFS...or when they're integrated in a
NIS environment (which is itself migrating to LDAP-only integration).

> 
> * Vision for Samba4 in Debian--now and in the future
> 
> * Challenges packaging enterprise infrastructure like Samba.  In
>   particular, how do you manage the configuration in a way that works
>   well both for single systems and for managed infrastructure in the
>   enterprise?  As software gains more dependencies, how do you provide
>   an easy/coherent experience?


When it comes at configuration, what we do in Samba packages is based
on one philosophy: don't deviate from upstream. Actually, very few
setup choices in Debian packages differ from upstream and, again, when
it comes at more complicated setups such as integration in the
enterprise environment (LDAP-based domains, etc.), everything is
mostly left up to the local admin to setup.

So, I'm not really sure if we manage to provide an easy/coherent
experience. I already have enough work by only following upstream
development.

Actually a challenge we face is that it's very hard for us to properly
deal with many bugs reported by our users because they're often
related to complicated setups which we don't really have easy access
to to be able to reproduce. That challenge is, IIRC, often met by
upstream developers. As a consequence, many bug reports in the BTS
remain unanswered, or loosely answered, because they more belong to
upstream than the Debian packages.



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