Looking for a mentor/adviser

Mon Feb 1 17:53:08 MST 2010

Well written Craig.

Sean, you and I have had similar issues with your technical
comprehension at a HackFest this past year, on a firewall
distribution.

Craig is so incredibly experienced, and such a succinct communicator,
always willing to assist, that it just defeats all practical common
sense to become argumentative with him rather than ask clear questions
that will illuminate the areas you misunderstand.

You might do well Sean to set up vigilance when you are motivated to
become argumentative over abstract details, since this is a clear red
flag that you don't understand the subject matter. It very well might
be a learning disability, which you can overcome.

After observing your long winded waste of argumentative words, when
plain process flowcharted questions on subject would easily solve your
problems, and ego based alienation of others over the past 12 months
in your postings, I want to make the following suggestions, since you
are highly intelligent, and motivated to do more than bang your head
against a wall with linux:

1) Make map based diagrams of the technical issues.

2) Whenever you pass a word of concept you don't fully understand, hit
wikipedia.  Example: "kerberos", the authentication process inherent
in Samba and A/D, which clearly is not LDAP.

3)

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 19:49 -0700, Sean Parsons wrote:
>> Craig,
>>
>>       We obviously don't agree. I followed those examples and they didn't
>> work. They were not easy to follow nor did they make the process easy to
>> understand, perhaps you are using your experience to draw from, which I
>> don't have. You also say I didn't need LDAP or Kerberos, that's pretty
>> arrogant when you didn't know why I selected them in the first place, yes it
>> may be possible to make it work without them, but my decision was to use
>> these components and that's when everything went wrong. You are free to sing
>> the praises of Samba, maybe someday I will to. But for know I know I can't
>> do it from the documentation and I needed help. My statements stand as facts
>> from my experience, and you were not there, nor have you considered my
>> explanation beyond defending your opinion, which is not right or wrong, it's
>> your opinion.
> ----
> You have a serious language comprehension problem.
>
> I clearly said you didn't need LDAP to join Samba systems to AD. I did
> not say you didn't need kerberos to join Samba systems to AD because you
> do.
>
> I am hoping that you take more time to comprehend what I am saying
> because I am being very precise.
>
> The only praise I sang for Samba was their documentation because it is
> incredibly complete. Most people do not want to comprehend that much
> information and so they go elsewhere for less information.
>
> The problem is that there are so many different scenarios for using
> Samba, both as a server and as a client. It can be a domain controller
> or a domain member, it can be a client or server using Windows 98 File
> sharing methods or current CIFS methods. It supports ancient and current
> Windows authentication methods (again both as client or server). It can
> configure into local system authentication/authorization using many
> different mechanisms including /etc/passwd, LDAP and AD. It provides
> support for Windows printing both as server and as client. In short,
> there is so much that Samba does that no simple documentation could
> possibly exist.
>
> But more to the issue... I have used Samba for over 10 years, have used
> it in all possible ways and NEVER have I ever seen or even heard of a
> reliable report that 'joining' a system to AD has damaged the AD setup.
>
> And yes, we clearly disagree but I actually employ Samba at various
> levels in various businesses and have no issues with using it and
> somehow have managed to do this without damaging AD domain controllers.
> ----
>>
>> I needed LDAP and Kerberos to handle the users and credentials, you may have
>> decided not to integrate user accounts, but for me it was essential and I
>> have no idea how you would do that without LDAP. I use Kerberos for my
>> windows network, so it stands to reason I would use it on this Samba server
>> residing in my network, heck it's even in the manual. I stated in my
>> explanation where it went wrong, deciding that I'm wrong by doing it
>> differently is not the same thing. I have a Linux based firewall that uses
>> LDAP to authenticate users for access, works like a charm, so I've had some
>> experience. My users should not have to re-authenticate every time they
>> access a file, and caching credentials separately means I have to change
>> them every time somebody changes a password, so I think you over simplified
>> the problem. What I did wrong was not knowing what I was doing with Samba
>> and trying to do this on a production network, because I thought I
>> understood what I was doing.
> ----
> You still haven't provided any reason to use LDAP. Samba and any
> reasonable Linux distribution can surely use the account information
> provided by AD.
>
> So far, the only problem I think I over simplified is thinking that you
> actually understand Windows networking because it seems pretty clear
> that you are hoping for Linux walk-throughs and and Webmin to conceal
> the problem that you don't understand Linux.
>
> Just so we're clear... Windows SBS server is essentially a crippled
> Windows Server that I presume they sell so small businesses everywhere
> don't use Linux servers.
> ----
>>
>> [Samba 3.x cannot participate as a domain controller on an AD domain.]
>> [Documentation is quite clear. But it is relatively simple and benign for]
>> [it to join an AD domain as a member server/workstation. It works, it's]
>> [relatively simple and it is not hazardous to an AD domain whatsoever.]
>>
>> Chapter 4 of the Samba documentation states multiple times the need to LDAP
>> to function completely, it does say it can work without - but at a loss of
>> functionality, i.e. Single Sign On (SSO). It also talks about it's ability
>> to work with NT4, but shows some caveats in 200x AD without additional
>> components, and several warnings about potential problems with
>> configuration, So I can point to where my information came from, and why I
>> chose to use the elements. I remember now that the use of Winbind was also
>> part of the process with LDAP so that should also be an element into my
>> failure.
> ----
> I'm quite sure that you are confusing various bits of information here
> because you don't need LDAP running on any Linux system for it to
> 'function completely' as an AD domain member. LDAP is part of AD but you
> do not need to run another LDAP server on Linux to 'join' AD as a domain
> member.
>
> I absolutely defy you find somewhere in the documentation that says
> otherwise.
> ----
>> Chapter 4 - "Domain Controller Types" and "Preparing for Domain Control"
>> explain that it CAN function as a domain controller, and how. You may want
>> to visit that section, and see where I got my information.
>>
>> I followed the documentation as best I could with the information I had, and
>> it didn't work. If you can make it work differently, bravo! You are a better
>> man than I, but then I already admitted I couldn't do it.
>>
>> [I think your statement 'Samba's documentation admits issues with non NT4]
>> [AD implementation and promises to fix it in V4' is completely flawed.]
>>
>>  I request you go to samba.org, click Latest News, and read the entry for
>> December 25, 2009. Covers the added functionality promised in V4, so I
>> believe I accurately paraphrased that article. Chapter 4 speaks volumes
>> about limits and potential issues with implementation and the need for
>> specific planning to minimize or avoid these issues.
> ----
> Samba 4 has nothing to do with Samba 3.x which is the only version of
> Samba that any distribution will use at this point. It is the only thing
> that I am discussing with you. It is new, rewritten, at best at an alpha
> level and intended to provide full AD functionality as any part of an AD
> forest. That of course has nothing to do with the conversation that we
> were having.
>
> Craig
>
>
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