[Bug 137656] Samba Backport Urgently Needed

[rvjcallanan]

Thank you all for quick replies

> First of all: Yelling won't help you a whole lot.

Very very very very very strong emphasis was the intention. *Asterixes don't seem to hack it anymore* ;-)
Do we have to be so politically correct about a few lines of uppercase?

> > I understand that much of this work has already been done (see
> > Enterprise Samba link on Samba web site with Debian 
> packages available
> > for download)...
> 
> I don't see that link. Could you point it out for me?
> 

Here is the link (it seems to be down at the moment but I did access it last night)
http://enterprisesamba.com

You normally access up-to-date Samba Debian packages from:
Samba Home Page->Left Pane->Download Info->EnterpriseSamba->Debian->Sarge or Woody....

I was previously informed (rightly or wrongly) that Ubuntu closely
tracks Debian. Now I don't know what the correlation is between Dapper
and Debian (Sarge? Woody?) but I would assume that if the latest Samba
release is available in packaged form for both these versions then all
(or most of) the hard work will have been done for Ubuntu. If there is a
serious degree of forking between Debian and Ubuntu, and this is
therefore an incorrect assumption, then this begs the inevitable
question:

"Why should anybody that is serious about Samba choose a Ubuntu distro over Debian?"
  
> I'm not saying that the Samba version we offer for Dapper is perfect.
> I'm not even saying it's good. I'm certainly not saying it 
> doesn't need
> fixing. It does. Very much so. We "just" need to:
> 
> a) pinpoint the exact bugs that makes the Samba version in Dapper
> unacceptable, extract patches for those bugs, integrate them into the
> Dapper packages, and put them into dapper-updates.
> 
> and/or
> 
> b) create a recent Samba package for Dapper and put it into -backports
> or perhaps a PPA for this particular purpose and somehow convey the
> message of this repository's existence to the users who are 
> experiencing
> problems.
> 
> The problem with a) is that it's a tedious and error-prone 
> process.  It
> takes a lot of time to evaluate bugs, and even longer to pinpoint the
> exact changes Samba that fixes them, and finally testing the 
> fixes. The
> problem with b) is the process of making the updated version of Samba
> apparant to everyone.  There is no set mechanism for that.

I accept these points...up to a point...but would you not agree that Samba is one of those apps that probably does not lend itself to piecemeal backports. It seems to me that there are so many inter-dependencies within Samba itself across releases that it would make more sense to perform backports in chunks that correlate closely with Samba releases á la Debian releases by Enterprise Samba people (mentioned above).
 
Just have a look at the Samba bug fixes between 3.022 and 3.025c and you will see what I mean.

> 
> I'm happy to accept input on the issue, especially if it's
> 
> c) not of the form "this is really easy, and I cannot 
> understand why you
> are not doing it already"
> 
You will note from my initial report that I apologised in advance if my assumption was incorrect.
As for reporting individual bugs...how long is a piece of string?

Look, don't get me wrong but there is a time for genteel discussion and
a time when somebody has to stand up and take notice. You may or may not
have noticed that many many well-intentioned people have taken the
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS/Samba plunge only to go back to Bill Gates with their
respective tails between their legs. As it stands, Samba support in
Dapper is experimental at best but still only a hairs breath away from
being a Windows Server killer.

I am more than willing to assist with testing of any package update.

-- 
Samba Backport Urgently Needed
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/137656
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Backporters, which is the bug contact for Dapper Backports.