Just a quick question on samba. Why does opensuse still use smbpasswd and a different smb.conf then let’s say ubuntu. The reason for this question is that I use both suse and ubuntu, and from what I can find on the samba site, ubuntu actually uses the way that samba recommends, which is to use the .tbd files. So yeah, just wondering why suse uses a custom setup for it. Any info would be awesome.
smbpasswd is an older text format. TDB is the recommended format now. I assume that OpenSUSE uses smbpasswd for compatibility with people who have been running Samba in older releases. However you can convert both ways, using tdbedit. Do a search on “smbpasswd tdb convert”. You also have to edit your smb.conf of course for the new format.
Samba is infinitely more configurable than windows 2000/xp. So the different versions of smb.conf reflect that very large degree of configurability.
Why does Suse use a different smb.conf from Ubuntu? Ubuntu uses the default from Debian, which seems to me to be oriented towards wins server and domain controller usage. Suse uses a different one which seems to me to be oriented towards workgroups and SOHO networks. That makes the parameters expressed inside smb.conf different.
Thanks for the help. It’s not so much smb.conf I’m looking at, it was more the backend options. I spent the better part of a few hours trying to find smbpasswd in ubuntu the other day cause I’ve got an older linux admin book that was talking about smbpasswd. Suffice it to say it took me a bit to find out that the .tbd’s were the new way to do it. I was just wondering why suse was different, but you seem to have answered my question, so thanks heaps.
The main reason that TDBs are preferred is that they are richer. It’s also a nice stepping stone to a LDAP backend, where the account attributes are stored as LDAP attributes.
Actually I discovered to my frustration from setting up Ubuntu for friends that out of the box smb.conf contains very little, not even a homes share. I looked around for a GUI tool to set it up but didn’t find one before I ran out of time so I just edited smb.conf by hand. If there was a tool I was supposed to use, a search didn’t reveal it. OpenSUSE on the other hand, has YaST and I have renewed appreciation of it.
Why Ubuntu for them and not OpenSUSE? They also intend to learn to install some software that is running on a server which is Debian, and I couldn’t subject them to Debian could I? Anyway the machine it replaced was Windows XP (which suicided with the BSOD of course) so that’s one less Windows machine. lol!
Yeah, suse and yast are both great tools if you want a gui, but that’s the whole reason that I’m trying to do it on ubuntu. ubuntu doesn’t have a lot of gui tools, so you have to edit things by and hand and do a lot of command line stuff, and that’s what I’m really wanting to learn. Call me weird, but I really wouldn’t have a problem being a command line guru, lol. However, I’m also trying to learn suse as well cause novell and red hat are the two main commercial vendors and if I had to pick one to learn, I’d rather do suse.
There’s nothing to stop you becoming a command line junkie in Suse. Console windows are the same as in Ubuntu. Most seasoned Linuxers are proficient with the command line regardless of their favourite distro. All you need is time.
On Thu October 16 2008 10:36 pm, ken yap wrote:
>
> smbpasswd is an older text format. TDB is the recommended format now. I
> assume that OpenSUSE uses smbpasswd for compatibility with people who
> have been running Samba in older releases. However you can convert both
> ways, using tdbedit. Do a search on “smbpasswd tdb convert”. You also
> have to edit your smb.conf of course for the new format.
>
>
Austin Gray;
The default value in Samba is “smbpasswd”, see the “passdb backend” parameter in
man smb.conf. If you wish to convert from smbpasswd to tdb it can be done as
follows ( all as root):
- Edit /etc/smb.conf to include in the global section, “passdb backend =
tdbsam, smbpasswd” and restart samba “rcsmb restart”. - In a terminal “pdbedit -i smbpasswd -e tdbsam”
- Edit /etc/smb.conf by removing smbpasswd (see 1) and restart samba (see 1)
The new backend should be: /etc/samba/passdb.tdb; you can now
remove /etc/samba/smbpasswd if you like.
I’m sure that this is more than anyone wanted.
–
P. V.
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum.
true, but with suse because the GUI tools are there I would get lazy and be more inclined to use them, LOL. Also, I prefer to use the standard way of implementing the software. I don’t really have an issue with the way suse customizes a lot of stuff cause you can use the gui to set it up and then use yast to tweak it or manually tweak it yourself. But if I try to read about samba online, some of it won’t apply to suse cause they use their own custom implementation of the software.
I don’t think it’s customised, more like what you get out of the box. Aside from what is compiled in, usually there are few limitations on what you can do. This is FLOSS after all. So that should be heaven for you if you want to learn CLI.
Personally I was happy to use a text editor to fix up smb.conf for my friends, but I wanted a GUI so that they can set up their own shares in future. Maybe I’ll find one before my next visit. (No I don’t like webmin, if anybody is going to suggest that, it has a habit of messing up the vendor’s preferred setup by doing things its way.)
what I meant was that the way suse package their version of samba is customised for suse using smbpasswd as the default backend for samba no longer uses smbpasswd, but the .tdb files in /var/lib/samba. Ubuntu, on the other hand, tends to use software in its default vanilla state. My original post wasn’t about how to setup or which is better, but more or less why suse does it differently. I don’t prefer one way over the other, I was just wonder why they did it differently.
Well that’s not the common usage of customised. By customised, people usually mean that the vendor has patched the mainline source in a way to add extra features, or to remove some features. Novell does customise the kernel a little, sometimes they add patches that are not yet in the mainline kernel. What you mean is that it’s configured out of the box for smbpasswd file. This is trivial to fix with a text editor and the TDB utility.
On Sat October 18 2008 04:36 am, austingray1 wrote:
>
> what I meant was that the way suse package their version of samba is
> customised for suse using smbpasswd as the default backend for samba no
> longer uses smbpasswd, but the .tdb files in /var/lib/samba. Ubuntu, on
> the other hand, tends to use software in its default vanilla state. My
> original post wasn’t about how to setup or which is better, but more or
> less why suse does it differently. I don’t prefer one way over the
> other, I was just wonder why they did it differently.
>
>
No the default from the Samba team (www.samba.org) is still smbpasswd. Check
the manual.
P. V.
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum.
On Sat October 18 2008 05:29 pm, PV wrote:
> On Sat October 18 2008 04:36 am, austingray1 wrote:
>
>>
>> what I meant was that the way suse package their version of samba is
>> customised for suse using smbpasswd as the default backend for samba no
>> longer uses smbpasswd, but the .tdb files in /var/lib/samba. Ubuntu, on
>> the other hand, tends to use software in its default vanilla state. My
>> original post wasn’t about how to setup or which is better, but more or
>> less why suse does it differently. I don’t prefer one way over the
>> other, I was just wonder why they did it differently.
>>
>>
> No the default from the Samba team (www.samba.org) is still smbpasswd. Check
> the manual.
See the entry for passdb backend in:
http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/smb.conf.5.html
–
P. V.
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum.
I read the link and fair enough, but you should also read this Chapter*11.*Account Information Databases. It contains at the very beginning of the document the following statements, "The three passdb backends that are fully maintained (actively supported) by the Samba Team are: smbpasswd (being obsoleted), tdbsam (a tdb-based binary file format), and ldapsam (LDAP directory). Of these, only the ldapsam backend stores both POSIX (UNIX) and Samba user and group account information in a single repository. The smbpasswd and tdbsam backends store only Samba user accounts", and “In a strict sense, there are three supported account storage and access systems. One of these is considered obsolete (smbpasswd). It is recommended to use the tdbsam method for all simple systems. Use ldapsam for larger and more complex networks.” So while the smbpasswd file might be the default today, it won’t be in the future.
On Sat October 18 2008 08:06 pm, austingray1 wrote:
>
> I read the link and fair enough, but you should also read this
> ‘Chapter*11.*Account Information Databases’ (http://tinyurl.com/58v8dk).
> It contains at the very beginning of the document the following
> statements, “-The three passdb backends that are fully maintained
> (actively supported) by the Samba Team are: smbpasswd (being obsoleted),
> tdbsam (a tdb-based binary file format), and ldapsam (LDAP directory).
> Of these, only the ldapsam backend stores both POSIX (UNIX) and Samba
> user and group account information in a single repository. The smbpasswd
> and tdbsam backends store only Samba user accounts”-, and “-In a strict
> sense, there are three supported account storage and access systems. One
> of these is considered obsolete (smbpasswd). It is recommended to use
> the tdbsam method for all simple systems. Use ldapsam for larger and
> more complex networks.-” So while the smbpasswd file might be the
> default today, it won’t be in the future.
>
>
Austingray;
For a home system smbpasswd is perfectly adequate. I doubt that any network
administrator worth their salt would adopt smbpasswd. For small networks with
no need for BDCs tdbsam works well. For anything else ldapsam would be by far
the best choice; but, relatively speaking, quite difficult to configure.
Certainly whether you setup Samba with SWAT, Webmin, Yast or manually you can
choose your backend. For the novice this choice is really unimportant and if
someone claims to be a network administrator they should know what to do.
However, your assertion that Opensuse is the odd man out is quite wrong.
P. V.
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum.
PV,
For a home system smbpasswd is perfectly adequate.
I never said the smbpasswd file wasn’t adequate.
However, your assertion that Opensuse is the odd man out is quite wrong.
And I never said that opensuse is the odd man out.
Please, don’t read things that aren’t there! I was merely asking a question as to why opensuse did it differently. If I wanted to figure it out on redhat, gentoo, or some other distro, I would have asked, but seeing as I only use ubuntu and opensuse, I was merely just wanting a reason, not a debate, about why opensuse used the smbpasswd file, that’s all I was after. I have stated, in earlier posts, that at this particular time I don’t care which backend I use, I was just wondering the differences of WHY, that’s it.