Hi! On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 7:48 PM, John Andersen <jsamyth@gmail.com> wrote:
On 4/7/2012 9:30 AM, HG wrote:
Hi!
Stumbled across this about SAMBA authentication and windows
On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 7:39 PM, jsa <jsamyth@gmail.com> wrote:
If you set your windows login and password the same as your Linux log in and password Samba and windows just takes care if it automatically. �If not you have to set up samba passwords for every user. In the time it takes to ask about setting up an insecure network you could have done it the secure way with yast.
Yes, if you have the same user name as in windows and same password, you will not need to enter them in windows even once I think, as Windows will try those by default.
However, what has been nagging me always is why is the SAMBA authentication separate from the general linux authentication (I don't know the correct word, sorry)? Why not have that synced, so that when user changes her password on the linux server, also the samba password changes. And even earlier on, why not have that linked with samba-users group or something, so that the users who are in that group would be able to use samba (same way as ssh)? Yes, I know all this can be done! But it is really, really hard. Ok, I'm still on 11.3 so I'm not sure if this has changed :-) But it has at least been really hard. Why not make this easy for openSUSE home users? This is really the worst parts of setting up a home server. Have user click "Enable Samba" somewhere in YaST and it would do all this. Would be excellent. Any real good reason why not to do this?
The reason this isn't automated from the Linux side like you suggest is because that is not the normal use case for Samba.
The normal use for Samba is to allow your Linux machine to be a file/print server for windows machines, in many (i dare say Most) case those windows users don't even have an account on the linux machine.
This may have been the situation some day - but I dare to claim that it's not it anymore. In fact, I've never seen such use actually. Small companies, who look for cheaper alternatives, use samba as their file server. Larger companies go with MS and they do not mix. Yes, you can probably give examples of companies that do what you say. I claim that it doesn't even matter that much. What matters, and what I think is the biggest use case, is to make linux act as a server at home! Coolest, would be to enable it to work as private cloud sharing docs securely over the internet! If home server use case is not yet the biggest, it could be made the biggest. The future of openSUSE as desktop only has been very long coming. I'm proposing, let's make it easy for normal home users to get also server functionality, to backup their Windows and Mac laptops to the dependable linux, and make that as one of the biggest selling points. People are buying NAS storage like crazy and you could do so much more with openSUSE .... if it would just work. But from the home users point of view, samba server doesn't work. (As seen even in this thread). And that's why I propose that the linux account would be synced to the samba accounts. It would make the whole system accessible. It does not hurt the print sharing one bit. And why not have the same users (specially at home) on the linux side also? Actually, there is a UI for adding users to linux and most often that is done during the installation. But there is AFAIK no easy way for the dad to add users to samba specially as he doesn't even know he needs to do that. Currently, when you create a linux user and give it a password. Then you create the same user for samba and give it a password. And when user changes the password, he needs to make it twice - probably from different place. I don't believe it needs LDAP. But if it does, fine - as long as it is completely hidden from the user. And no, it definitely does not need a domain. Actually, making user join to domain, would be again one more hurdle for the home user to just go about his business of using Linux as it can be used. I know here are lot of guys who are very smart and know how to do this and it would not even be a big project. But do you really not see the opportunity in home servers? Think about it: "Desktop computer that you can use to safely surf the internet, hold all your photos and videos and share them to all your devices inside your home network. Host backups of your laptop. Just install, add the same user accounts you have on your laptops and everything works. Even streams your videos to your TV." Now, that would be more value for home user than Libre Office :-) Yes, Libre Office is cool! But it's time to make the server side easy too. -- HG. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org