Package: samba4
Version: 4.0.0~alpha4~20080522-1
Severity: minor
The references to LanManager in the short descriptions of so many
samba packages are unhelpful.
For a start, as I understand it, its name was "LAN Manager", not
"LanManager"; up until about version 2.1 it couldn't do SMB, and
soon after that Microsoft abandoned it in favour of building the
"Network Neighborhood" into Windows itself. That was round about
the time of Linux 0.01; these days the only webpages talking about
LanManager in the present tense (other than these Debian Samba suite
package descriptions) are warnings about LM-hashed passwords.
Also, if Samba 4 is going to be specifically targeted at SMB2, it
seems a little perverse to continue advertising it as supporting
"Windows, NT, OS/2 and DOS clients".
So I'd like to beg for samba4 to make a break with ancient tradition
and replace the "LanManager" reference in the short description with
something more informative - maybe it should be:
Description: "Network Neighborhood" server - version 4
Or maybe even just "Samba server version 4", saving the explanation
for the long description? As long as the keywords that MS refugees
would be likely to look for are there (things like "cross-platform"
and "Windows network shares") there's nothing wrong with mentioning
LAN Manager somewhere in the long description, but it certainly
doesn't belong in the samba4 short description.
Once samba versions 3 and 4 are both in unstable, there should
ideally be material in _both_ sets of long descriptions explaining
why I might want one or the other. Is there any hope of a general
cleanup of Samba-suite package descriptions at the same time as that
text is being added? Here for example is a (wishlist level) review
of the current samba (v3) package description, followed by a first
draft alternative proposal.
# Package: samba
[...]
# Description: a LanManager-like file and printer server for Unix
# The Samba software suite is a collection of programs that
# implements the SMB/CIFS protocol for unix systems, allowing you to serve
# files and printers to Windows, NT, OS/2 and DOS clients. This protocol
# is sometimes also referred to as the LanManager or NetBIOS protocol.
# .
# This package contains all the components necessary to turn your
# Debian GNU/Linux box into a powerful file and printer server.
This text has minor problems with overpersonalisation ("my Debian
GNU/Linux box" may be company property) and major problems with OS
names. Listing NT as a separate OS from Windows makes no sense, and
GNU/Linux isn't UNIX (or indeed unix or Unix). On the other hand,
this package will work to turn my Debian box into a server even if
I'm apt-getting the hurd-i386 or kfreebsd-amd64 flavours.
And meanwhile SMB/CIFS _isn't_ also referred to as the LanManager or
NetBIOS protocol. NetBIOS was on a different OSI layer; maybe it's
meant to be a case of "also wrongly but commonly referred to as",
but where on the WWW is there any evidence of this misnomer?
Oh, and surely samba _doesn't_ contain all those components. That's
why it has a hard dependency on samba-common!
# .
# Currently, the Samba Debian packages consist of the following:
# .
# samba - LanManager-like file and printer server for Unix.
How useful is this? Fair enough, the list includes some packages
that I wouldn't necessarily find otherwise (and its existence gives
me an opportunity to suggest "improved" versions here), but listing
samba's short description in its own long description seems a bit
over the top.
# samba-common - Samba common files used by both the server and the client.
Mentioning samba-common or libsmbclient here is pointless. If I
needed them, the dependencies would pull them in automatically.
# smbclient - LanManager-like simple client for Unix.
This seems crazier than calling the server LanManager-like; surely
the client doesn't even have a similar user interface?
# swat - Samba Web Administration Tool
# samba-doc - Samba documentation.
# samba-doc-pdf - Samba documentation in PDF format.
Fair enough. But what kind of order are these being listed in?
# smbfs - Mount and umount commands for the smbfs (kernels 2.2.x and above).
References to smbfs as opposed to cifs are a bit out of date, but
warnings for Linux 2.0.x users are just absurd.
# libpam-smbpass - pluggable authentication module for SMB/CIFS password
# database
# libsmbclient - Shared library that allows applications to talk to SMB/CIFS
# servers
These are a bit long-winded.
# libsmbclient-dev - libsmbclient shared libraries
Huh? Surely the libsmbclient shared libraries are in libsmbclient!
What this package has is the development libraries.
# winbind - Service to resolve user and group information from Windows NT
# servers
Outdated; by "NT" it means, what, "domain accounts"?
I'd suggest changing the synopses of the listed packages to:
libpam-smbpass: pluggable authentication module for Samba
libsmbclient: Samba client libraries
libsmbclient-dev: Samba client development libraries
samba: "Network Neighborhood" server
samba-common: Samba common files
samba-doc: Samba documentation
samba-doc-pdf: Samba documentation in PDF format
smbclient: Samba client
smbfs: mount command for Samba file systems
swat: Samba Web Administration Tool
winbind: Samba authentication server
Note that this list fails to mention the python-samba or samba-dbg
packages. Wouldn't you be better off trimming the list down to a
bare minimum and making sure the packages are all well supplied with
"suite::samba" debtags?
# .
# It is possible to install a subset of these packages depending on
# your particular needs. For example, to access other SMB/CIFS servers you
# should only need the smbclient and samba-common packages.
A fact about the Debian package management system, not about samba.
# .
# http://www.samba.org/
Make that:
Homepage: http://www.samba.org/
And I'd suggest samba(3) should have a package description along the
general lines of:
Description: "Network Neighborhood" server
The Samba software suite implements the SMB/CIFS protocol, providing
cross-platform support for Windows-style network shares.
.
This package sets a Debian machine up as a powerful LAN file and printer
server accessible from Microsoft operating systems. It is not required
for connecting to existing servers (see smbclient) or for mounting
remote file systems via Samba (see smbfs).
.
Documentation is supplied in the packages samba-doc and samba-doc-pdf.
Then the samba 4 package would be something like this:
Description: "Network Neighborhood" server - version 4
The Samba software suite implements the SMB/CIFS protocol, providing
cross-platform support for Windows-style network shares.
.
Samba 4 is the next-generation version of Samba, designed to support
SMB2 (as used in post-XP Windows). It is not yet considered ready for
production use - in particular, no guarantees are made with regard to
upgrades between versions.
.
This package sets a Debian machine up as a powerful LAN file, printer
and domain server accessible from Microsoft operating systems. It is
not required for [etc, tweaked if necessary]
--
JBR
Ankh kak! (Ancient Egyptian blessing)
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