velt.de

• Schlomo Schapiro - The Simple High Available Linux File Server
  • Real hardware as primary server, "virtual cold stand-by server"
  • Local storage and SAN
  • GPT for Partitions bigger than 2TB
  • Nice implementation of cold stand-by cluser
• Oliver Tennert - Parallel NFS
  • HPC: More and more data
  • More nodes, more nodes, more throuput
  • Not a good solution: Cluster NFS
  • Distributed File Systems: IBM's GPFS, SGI's CXFS, PanFS, PVFS2, ...
  • NFSv4 includes everything a network file system needs (NFSv3 does NOT)
  • pNFS optional part of NFS 4.1
  • Separtion of metadata path/server and data path/server
  • SAP (Storage Access Protocoll) not specified, incompatible clients get data from metadata server
  • Current state: "should work", many layouts on the way
• Steve French: From DFS to Kerberos: Update on Linux CIFS client
  • Kerberos support on way into the kernel
  • Apple symlinks over CIFS are the 4th way to do it
  • Setting up all stuff needed and/or supported by NFSv4 is a pain in ...
• Jelmer Vernooij, Andrew Bartlett: Samba 4, where are we now?
  • Samba 4 Alpha 3 released 2 weeks ago, announcement mail gets eaten...
  • More than TechPreview, basic features completed, useable for SOME environments, needs more testers
  • No more EJS, Python rulZ! ;-) And GNU Make
  • Much work done in LDB subsystem/internal database: Subtree rename, sort of grouo policy, (some) schema validation
  • Autoconfiguration of backend (OpenLDAP)
  • SWAT disabled due to JS->Python, SoC project
  • MMC works and some group policy
  • Beta at end of THIS year! AD DC, file search, AD Member
  • What would stop YOU using Samba 4?
• Andrew Bartlett: The little shop of horrors: AD's notation of LDAP
  • AD "based on" LDAP, an IETF standard protocol to access a standard X.509 directory
  • AD's schema is different: AD CN is not LDAP CN (multi values), AD top hast 75 new elements, ...
  • No DNS and NTP in Samba 4 but ideas how it could/should work
• Volker Lendecke: Samba 3.2 Infrastructure changes
  • Un-/Marshalling code moved to PIDL
  • One overall cache for nearly everything
  • 3.2 is slower than 3.0 (much more malloc())
  • Solution: remove malloc() calls, use talloc_*() instead
• Jelmer Vernooij: RPC scripting using Python
  • Samba 3.0 had already Python bindings
  • Switch now to stop people from coding EJS (may be removed later)
  • More potential developer with Python
  • PIDL generates Python bindings
  • Python/SoC: smbclient, SWAT, Samba-GTK
  • At the moment use "smbpython"
  • python-ldb/python-tdb already in Debian/Ubuntu
  • Jelmer: "Next version of Perl has unicode operators..."
  • Tridge: "I have a purpose in life! Telling people how to resize fonts in xterms!"

OK, here I am at Göttingen. Just waiting for the first talks.

I'll try to report continuously so check back later.

• Welcome notes and Key note
  • John Terpstra talking about Samba history: "We become fat, dump ... and happy. It's a little bit like life, isnt it?"
  • John Terpstra: "When will Samba 4 be released, Andrew?" - Andrew Bartlet: "End of the year!" - Masses: "Which year?"
  • Volker Lendecke asked Dirk Hohndel "Please plug in the beamer cable!" - "No, turn off the beamer! I have no slides! This here (pointing to his laptop) is only for monitoring the stock exchange when market opens..."
  • Dirk Hohndel: "80% of open source projects have 1-3 developers... and 1-3 users..."
  • Dirk Hohndel about licenses: "What are 10 lawyers at bottom of sea?... Yes, you're right: a good start!"
• Tridge - Samba and the PFIF
  Title changed to "Samba and Microsoft"
  • Good cooperation with M$ in 1990's, bad/less cooperation starting in about 1999
  • M$ does more than they have to (releases documentation publicly! Open cooperation)
  • PFIF (Protocol Freedom Information Foundation) makes documentation (incl. updates for at least 5 years) availably under NDA - but GPL compatible
  • "5 years is a long time. Maybe Google bought M$ by this time... who knows?"
  • M$ has to cope with Samba bugs - in appliances and embedded devices
  • Now: technical cooperation, lawyers are now sidelined. Both sides participating in numberous events
  • Skill set required which is needed to develop Samba has changed. Documentation of the protocoll is available now!
  • ... but it takes at big bunch of time to implement all the information
• Wolfgang Grieskamp (M$) - Model-Based Quality Assurance of the SMB2 Protocol Document
  I saw some of the slides before the talk... OMG! What will happen to the people in here? This will be a REAL Power Point Picture Show :o(
  Yes, the slides are a kind of... "marketing" but the information he gives seem to be really good!
  • 250 protocols, about 30k pages of documentation
  • Writing documentation, vendor developing model and test suite (no internal knowledge). Usability of documentation proven.
  • SMB2: 300 pages documentation, 3000 requirements for the test suite
  • No deadlines! There's something to fix? Fix it! Don't release!

  Looks like M$ is interessted in producing high quality documentation for their protocols!

• Julien Kerihuel - When OpenChange assimilates the Borg
  • OpenChange: OSS implementation of the Exchange server and protocols. Interoperability and documentation. Build upon Samba4 infrastructure
  • libmapi as client side library ("Outlook replacement")
  • OpenChange server implements MAPI/NSPI providers but no message storage yet
  • As a client nearly everthing (most common) works with Exchange 2007(?)
  • Main focus on providing libraries, helping other projects with libmapi (Evolution-Plugin, KDE4)
  • No Thunderbird (at the moment!), Google SoC: fetchmail, Akondai
  • Libmapi API fully documented! And more documentation!
  • Libmapiadmin for administrating user on Exchange server
  • MOCABOX as application box, integration with other OSS
  • Now: more time to code on OpenChange server

... zumindest hab ich grad ziemlich stark diesen Eindruck. Ich bin jetzt innerhalb von 4 Tagen fünf mal nach Samba-Geschichten gefragt worden bzw. habe mitbekommen, wie jemand was dazu wissen wollte.

Für alle Samba-Neulinge bietet sich das Buch von John Terpstra an: Samba 3 By Example - gibt's unter diesem Namen auch auf totem Baum (aka" "als gedruckter Buch"), man muss dann aber auf die aktuellen Updates verzichten, die Online regelmäßig miteingepflegt werden.

Wenn man dann schon etwas weiter ist, und spezielle Fragestellungen hat, darf man auch mal einen Blick in die Samba HOWTO Collection (The Official Samba 3.2.x HOWTO and Reference Guide) werfen. Man kann sich das vorne-nach-hinten-durchlesen hier allerdings sparen - es ist eine Sammlung von Know-How und ist damit eher ein Nachschlagewerk.

Viel Spaß damit! *g*

PS: Nein, Samba 4 ist noch nicht soweit und Samba kann auch noch kein Controller für eine ADS sein ;-)