samba - Nov 2003 - SV: Samba-Citrix compatability

I have searched for some FAQ/HOWTO regarding Citrix/Metaframe to no
avail.  (Like this one
http://samba.org/~jht/HOWTO/Samba-HOWTO-Collection.pdf )

What I would like to see in such a FAQ/HOWTO:

- Compilation issues regarding Citrix/metaframe 
- - ie the need to increase the MAX_CONNECTION setting before
compilation
- - ie how to compile samba to a 64 bit application to get more
available file descriptors (problem for solaris)
- the need to tweak the /etc/system settings (ie "set rlim_fd_max
<number>")
- oplocks settings in smb.conf
- the single smbd process issue and workaround(s) (wins and
DNS-proxy/netbios names?)
- the home-share issue and problem 

All these issues, and probably more, I feel are related to
Citrix/metaframe vs. Samba.  If I am wrong and somewhere there is a FAQ
regarding this then all the better.  Just need to find it. ;-)  If not
then it is most neeeded.

And Samba4?  What is this? :-) Due 2005?  

Kind regards
Per Kjetil Grotnes
Some governmental department in Norway

> Andrew Bartlett
> Sendt: 4. november 2003 02:20
> 
> On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 11:55:25AM +1100, DAVIES Rob wrote: > G'day,
>
> > We are having problems when connecting to our Solaris 8 server Zeus 
> > from our Windows 2000 Terminal Servers.
> 
> I think you might be hitting two of the nastiest bugs with 
> that combination.
> 
> Firstly, there are issues with Solaris 8, and TDB locks, for 
> which there is a solaris kernel patch (it's an fcntl issue).  
> But more importantly, there is an issue caused by the way 
> Windows Terminal Server clients connect - they all use the 
> same smbd.  This causes all their operations to be 
> serialised, even worse if something blocks.
> 
> The best solution is to call your system by as many names as 
> possible. For example, call it by one name per user, 
> particularly for roaming profiles.  (So make a user's profile 
> path/homedir \\zeus-username\username or the like).  Use DNS 
> (with a samba wins server set to 'dns proxy') or fixed 
> entires in your wins.dat, or an lmhosts file, to force the 
> multiple names.  Samba doesn't mind what it gets called.

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 10:11:00AM +0100, perkjetil.grotnes@pbe.oslo.kommune.no
wrote:
> I have searched for some FAQ/HOWTO regarding Citrix/Metaframe to no
> avail.  (Like this one
> http://samba.org/~jht/HOWTO/Samba-HOWTO-Collection.pdf )
> 
> What I would like to see in such a FAQ/HOWTO:
> 
> - Compilation issues regarding Citrix/metaframe 
> - - ie the need to increase the MAX_CONNECTION setting before
> compilation
Please file a bug against this.  There is no valid reson for us to
allow 2^16 session setups, but only 2^8 tree connects.
> - - ie how to compile samba to a 64 bit application to get more
> available file descriptors (problem for solaris)
> - the need to tweak the /etc/system settings (ie "set rlim_fd_max >
<number>")
> - oplocks settings in smb.conf
> - the single smbd process issue and workaround(s) (wins and
> DNS-proxy/netbios names?)
> - the home-share issue and problem 
What is this one in particular?
> All these issues, and probably more, I feel are related to
> Citrix/metaframe vs. Samba.  If I am wrong and somewhere there is a FAQ
> regarding this then all the better.  Just need to find it. ;-)  If not
> then it is most neeeded.
So, when can we expect the patch (seriously, if you can get it
started, you might just tempt some of our poor documentation slaves.)
> And Samba4?  What is this? :-) Due 2005?  
A research project, that has stripped out all the basic assumptions
from Samba, and is building it all from scratch again.  Very
interesting.  The very brave can check out the samba4 repository, but
it's not something even close to functional yet (the posix backend -
ie, access to a unix filesystem is yet to be reimplemeted).

Andrew Bartlett

> From: Andrew Bartlett [mailto:abartlet@samba.org] 
> > - Compilation issues regarding Citrix/metaframe
> > - - ie the need to increase the MAX_CONNECTION setting before
> > compilation
> Please file a bug against this.  There is no valid reson for 
> us to allow 2^16 session setups, but only 2^8 tree connects.
Hmm, The "bug" I tried to refere to is the "smbd/conn.c: #define
MAX_CONNECTIONS".
If you have Citrix/Metaframe the default value (128? 256?) is way to
low.  
This would be the max amount of "connections" from a single machine,
right?  

Quote from "conn.c" : 
/* set these to define the limits of the server. NOTE These are on a
per-client basis. Thus any one machine can't connect to more than
MAX_CONNECTIONS services, but any number of machines may connect at
one time. */

On each of our Citrix servers we can have up to 100 users all connecting
to 10 shares 
on the samba server = 1000 connections 'services' for that one citrix
server?  
> > - the home-share issue and problem
> What is this one in particular?
Well, I am not sure this is a bug.  More of an issue.  

If you use 

[home-disk]
path = /home/%U/

and profile path in user manager in windows mapping H: to
\\server\home-disk

You would get serious problems with files having the same name on two
home-dirs.  It would be a locking problem on the windows side.

User1 opens "iloveyou.doc" on his home-dir for writing would yield a
\\server\home-disk\iloveyou.doc lock.
User2 opens "iloveyou.doc" on her home-dir and windows would think
this
was the same \\server\home-disk\iloveyou.doc and get a message the file
was locked.  Even though these were 

/home/user1/iloveyou.doc and 
/home/user2/iloveyou.doc.

The fix is to use

[homes]
path = /home/%S

And a user manager profile H: mapping to \\server\%username%

Thus the path above would not (for windows) be:

\\server\user1\iloveyou.doc and
\\server\user2\iloveyou.doc

In most other environments other than Citrix this would not be a problem
(ie w2k workstation clients).
> > All these issues, and probably more, I feel are related to 
> > Citrix/metaframe vs. Samba.  If I am wrong and somewhere there is a 
> > FAQ regarding this then all the better.  Just need to find 
> it. ;-)  If 
> > not then it is most neeeded.
> So, when can we expect the patch (seriously, if you can get 
> it started, you might just tempt some of our poor 
> documentation slaves.)
We have run Samba since about '97 with Citrix winframe/metaframe.  It
works.  But there still are issues.
I keep an eye on all Citrix/Metaframe posts on this mailinglist and I
mean I have seen some attempts of patches for Citrix.  But unfortunatly
nothing that has stuck to anywhere reachable (FAQ).

We have tuned the samba installation compilation, unix-settings and
smb.conf so that it now works fairly well.  We still have some weird
"cannot save" happenings once a day or so, but nothing really
critical.
I must admit that we are still running 2.2.6 since from the changelog
for 2.2.8 we could not find any related fixes to Citrix problems.
> > And Samba4?  What is this? :-) Due 2005?
> A research project, that has stripped out all the basic 
> assumptions from Samba, and is building it all from scratch 
> again.  Very interesting.  The very brave can check out the 
> samba4 repository, but it's not something even close to 
> functional yet (the posix backend - ie, access to a unix 
> filesystem is yet to be reimplemeted).
Yes, sounds very interesing indeed.  

Regards
Per Kjetil Grotnes

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 perkjetil.grotnes@pbe.oslo.kommune.no wrote:
> I have searched for some FAQ/HOWTO regarding Citrix/Metaframe to no
> avail.  (Like this one
> http://samba.org/~jht/HOWTO/Samba-HOWTO-Collection.pdf )
>
> What I would like to see in such a FAQ/HOWTO:
Are you willing to help write this? You too can make a difference you
know!
>
> - Compilation issues regarding Citrix/metaframe
> - - ie the need to increase the MAX_CONNECTION setting before
> compilation
> - - ie how to compile samba to a 64 bit application to get more
> available file descriptors (problem for solaris)
> - the need to tweak the /etc/system settings (ie "set rlim_fd_max >
<number>")
> - oplocks settings in smb.conf
> - the single smbd process issue and workaround(s) (wins and
> DNS-proxy/netbios names?)
> - the home-share issue and problem
>
> All these issues, and probably more, I feel are related to
> Citrix/metaframe vs. Samba.  If I am wrong and somewhere there is a FAQ
> regarding this then all the better.  Just need to find it. ;-)  If not
> then it is most neeeded.
Good points! Will you contribute some text that we can add to the HOWTO?

Information like this gets documented when someone with your kind of
passion writes some basic guidelines and contributes it to the HOWTO.
Please do not leave this to others, while the needs are fresh in your mind
please write a few paragraphs on each and send them to me for inclusion.

Cheers,
John T.
>
> And Samba4?  What is this? :-) Due 2005?
>
> Kind regards
> Per Kjetil Grotnes
> Some governmental department in Norway
>
>
> > Andrew Bartlett
> > Sendt: 4. november 2003 02:20
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 11:55:25AM +1100, DAVIES Rob wrote: >
G'day, >
> > > We are having problems when connecting to our Solaris 8 server
Zeus
> > > from our Windows 2000 Terminal Servers.
> >
> > I think you might be hitting two of the nastiest bugs with
> > that combination.
> >
> > Firstly, there are issues with Solaris 8, and TDB locks, for
> > which there is a solaris kernel patch (it's an fcntl issue).
> > But more importantly, there is an issue caused by the way
> > Windows Terminal Server clients connect - they all use the
> > same smbd.  This causes all their operations to be
> > serialised, even worse if something blocks.
> >
> > The best solution is to call your system by as many names as
> > possible. For example, call it by one name per user,
> > particularly for roaming profiles.  (So make a user's profile
> > path/homedir \\zeus-username\username or the like).  Use DNS
> > (with a samba wins server set to 'dns proxy') or fixed
> > entires in your wins.dat, or an lmhosts file, to force the
> > multiple names.  Samba doesn't mind what it gets called.
>
>
-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht@samba.org

>Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > On each of our Citrix servers we can have up to 100 users all 
> > connecting to 10 shares on the samba server = 1000 connections 
> > 'services' for that one citrix server?
> I know all this. Now all I need is for you to write it up in 
> bugzilla.samba.org so we can remmember to get it fixed.
Yes, well.  I got carried away.  And when people now search the
mailinglist they might get a thread-hit on Citrix issues here. ;-)

I have posted a 'bug' report: #716.  Tried to follow the guidelines for
filling it in.  Hopefully it is acceptable.
> > In most other environments other than Citrix this would not be a 
> > problem (ie w2k workstation clients).
> You would be surprised.  Even with non-citrix setups, we get 
> multiple %U mappings, and all the resultant fun.
Even single client environments which probably 95% of the usage versus
Samba is in the rest of the world?  It definitely is a problem for
Metaframe users. 
> > changelog for 2.2.8 we could not find any related fixes to Citrix 
> > problems.
> The main issue is the security fixes.  But can you write down 
> what you have learnt?
You mean as a chapter on Citrix Metaframe for us Samba users?  Some of
the issues I listed are from the mailinglist (which do not directly
consern our current setup) and others we just did to solve a problem and
not to solve the cause of the problem.  But I might attempt to write
something about the problems that we have worked through yes.

Per Kjetil Grotnes

From: John H Terpstra [mailto:jht@samba.org] 
> > I have searched for some FAQ/HOWTO regarding Citrix/Metaframe to no 
> > avail.  (Like this one 
> > http://samba.org/~jht/HOWTO/Samba-HOWTO-Collection.pdf )
> > What I would like to see in such a FAQ/HOWTO:
> Are you willing to help write this? You too can make a 
> difference you know!
Hehe. Hi John. I knew you would pop in here sooner or later.  I am sure
you have a default text you paste in for us silly enough to stick our
nose out.  ;-)  Jokes aside.  Yes, I could attempt to help with this as
I told Andrew earlier.
> > All these issues, and probably more, I feel are related to 
> > Citrix/metaframe vs. Samba.  If I am wrong and somewhere there is a 
> > FAQ regarding this then all the better.  Just need to find 
> Information like this gets documented when someone with your 
> kind of passion writes some basic guidelines and contributes 
> it to the HOWTO. Please do not leave this to others, while 
> the needs are fresh in your mind please write a few 
> paragraphs on each and send them to me for inclusion.
We do not have any _current_ need of a HOWTO.  What I registred was a
user question and an answer from one of the samba-team that I had seen
before (with some additional info about dns-proxy that I had not seen
before and still wonder about).  

Thus I see that there is a need for such a Citrix-HOWTO, and I would
have offered my services earlier if I felt confident that i could
contribute to this document.  As I said earlier - we have a running
environment and its been awhile since i tweaked it.  I am probably not
the best to deliver such info, but I might do an attempt.

Regards
Per Kjetil Grotnes

(PS: i think you do great work getting people to help the community with
documenting samba)

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 perkjetil.grotnes@pbe.oslo.kommune.no wrote:
> From: John H Terpstra [mailto:jht@samba.org]
> > > I have searched for some FAQ/HOWTO regarding Citrix/Metaframe to
no
> > > avail.  (Like this one
> > > http://samba.org/~jht/HOWTO/Samba-HOWTO-Collection.pdf )
> > > What I would like to see in such a FAQ/HOWTO:
> > Are you willing to help write this? You too can make a
> > difference you know!
>
> Hehe. Hi John. I knew you would pop in here sooner or later.  I am sure
> you have a default text you paste in for us silly enough to stick our
> nose out.  ;-)  Jokes aside.  Yes, I could attempt to help with this as
> I told Andrew earlier.
Your posting was too tempting to leave it alone. :)
>
> > > All these issues, and probably more, I feel are related to
> > > Citrix/metaframe vs. Samba.  If I am wrong and somewhere there is
a
> > > FAQ regarding this then all the better.  Just need to find
> > Information like this gets documented when someone with your
> > kind of passion writes some basic guidelines and contributes
> > it to the HOWTO. Please do not leave this to others, while
> > the needs are fresh in your mind please write a few
> > paragraphs on each and send them to me for inclusion.
>
> We do not have any _current_ need of a HOWTO.  What I registred was a
> user question and an answer from one of the samba-team that I had seen
> before (with some additional info about dns-proxy that I had not seen
> before and still wonder about).
Please document your thoughts. Send them in, ask others to help flesh it
out. None of us knows enough, but by working together we can produce good
information for our users.
> Thus I see that there is a need for such a Citrix-HOWTO, and I would
> have offered my services earlier if I felt confident that i could
> contribute to this document.  As I said earlier - we have a running
> environment and its been awhile since i tweaked it.  I am probably not
> the best to deliver such info, but I might do an attempt.
If you have the passion to write something that is much better than a
competent expert who writes nothing.

- John T.
>
> Regards
> Per Kjetil Grotnes
>
> (PS: i think you do great work getting people to help the community with
> documenting samba)
>
>
-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht@samba.org