Hi all, We (the Samba Team) need some feed back from our user community. Anyone want to help out? All you need to do is post us a one liner. Tell us if you want 8 character length limited print share names or larger. If you really must have longer print share names - then how many characters? Should we limit the length? Background:>From time to time we receive patches to increase the maximum length of aprinter share. The default in Samba is 8 characters. This default causes printer names that are longer than 8 characters in the /etc/printcap file to NOT appear in the printer browse list. If we were to remove this limitation and allow more than 8 characters then we will get complaints from some users who use older SMB clients (eg: old WfW, Older DOS clients, etc.). In order to avoid these complaints we have kept the 8 character limit in place. The real question now at hand is this: How long after one has eaten the chicken ought we hold on to it's legs? Given that the old SMB clients are really quite obsolete, should we continue to live with this limitation. Samba-1.9.17 is now in alpha 5 and is due for release within a week or two, if we get enough passionate requests to bury the limitation - then we will make that happen. After all, we do wish our users a peaceful existence! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John H Terpstra - Samba Team -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If all the politicians in the world were laid end on end they would reach no further than their policies! Their mileage may vary!
At 11:36 AM 8/3/97 +0000, John H Terpstra wrote:>We (the Samba Team) need some feed back from our user community. >Anyone want to help out? All you need to do is post us a one liner. >Tell us if you want 8 character length limited print share names or larger. >If you really must have longer print share names - then how many characters? >Should we limit the length?What's wrong with making it configurable? A simple setting in smb.conf, with the default at 'longer than 8 chars'. short printer name = yes/no ; (default = yes) alternatively; printer name length = n ; {n | 7 < n < 256} I see no reason to make this a boolean issue. I want both <grin>. _________________________________________________ Roeland M.J. Meyer (RM993) e-mail: rmeyer@mhsc.com web pages: http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer _________________________________________________
I notice that all M$ does about this is warn the user when they
choose names that go beyond what the older OS's will do. Maybe
that is the appropriate response (odd for M$, I know). testparm
could spit out a warning, say.
I say: "Whichever is easiest for the SAMBA team, but above all
else, stability"
8/32 characters matters <<<<< stability.
-- Fred P.
P.S. As someone who still evaluates SAMBA vis-a-vis its commercial
counterparts, it's still the best product around.
On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, John H Terpstra wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We (the Samba Team) need some feed back from our user community.
> Anyone want to help out? All you need to do is post us a one liner.
> Tell us if you want 8 character length limited print share names or larger.
> If you really must have longer print share names - then how many
characters?
> Should we limit the length?
>
> Background:
> >From time to time we receive patches to increase the maximum length of
a
> printer share. The default in Samba is 8 characters. This default causes
printer
> names that are longer than 8 characters in the /etc/printcap file to NOT
appear
> in the printer browse list.
>
> If we were to remove this limitation and allow more than 8 characters then
> we will get complaints from some users who use older SMB clients (eg: old
WfW,
> Older DOS clients, etc.). In order to avoid these complaints we have kept
the
> 8 character limit in place.
>
> The real question now at hand is this: How long after one has eaten the
chicken
> ought we hold on to it's legs? Given that the old SMB clients are
really quite
> obsolete, should we continue to live with this limitation.
>
> Samba-1.9.17 is now in alpha 5 and is due for release within a week or two,
> if we get enough passionate requests to bury the limitation - then we will
> make that happen. After all, we do wish our users a peaceful existence!
>
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> John H Terpstra - Samba Team
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> If all the politicians in the world were laid end on end they would reach
no further than
> their policies! Their mileage may vary!
>
>
I'd prefer up to 255 characters.. That is usually enough to give any name you want, and doesn't push you into 8 character frames
Hi, I prefer to drop that 8 character limit, I think 64 should be enough! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Konstantin Eftaxias Tel.: ++49 711 701 756 Eftaxias EDV Beratung Fax.: ++49 711 701 339 Bernhauser Hauptstr. 29 eMail kef@eeb.de 70794 Filderstadt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, John H Terpstra wrote:> Hi all, > > We (the Samba Team) need some feed back from our user community. > Anyone want to help out? All you need to do is post us a one liner. > Tell us if you want 8 character length limited print share names or larger. > If you really must have longer print share names - then how many characters? > Should we limit the length?Hi, How about: #ifdef SHORTNAMES blah blah #else blah blah #endif --- Peter Blake ppb@hft.co.uk ppb@baloo.tcp.co.uk
> Tell us if you want 8 character length limited print share > names or larger. If we were to remove this limitation and allow > more than 8 characters then we will get complaints from some > users who use older SMB clients (eg: old WfW, Older DOS > clients, etc.).Mangle the sharename? (See below). I maintain a webpage about using these older clients with Samba, http://carol.wins.uva.nl/~leeuw/samba/dos.html (because nobody else seems to -- BTW, Paul B., if you're reading this: it has still not been added to the Samba Homepage!). So I feel I'll have to jump in to take the stand for those users... :-) The 2 DOS clients I tried (MS Client and LanMan) indeed seem to have this 8 character limit. Browsing those printer shares does not seem to have that limit. If you bypass the /etc/printcap support in Samba and add printers manually to smb.conf, the longer sharenames happily show up if you do a NET VIEW on those clients. However, the problem is of course that NET USE gives an error. The various OS/2 clients seem to have a 20 character limit, but the most recent ones (Warp Connect and Warp 4) come with full LPR support, so it should not be that much of a problem. I would hate to exclude all these users from using Samba printers. Not everbody runs Windows, you know. And not every user reads this mailing list. Just search with Dejanews for "DOS" in combination with "Samba". I believe there are quite some DOS users out there! We should not overestimate the importance of the sharename length. If you need a long description, why not use the Comments field? On the other hand, I agree the 8 character limit *is* confusing ("why don't they show up in the browse list?!"). But at least it forces sysadmins to reduce the length, thereby accomodating users with older clients. If you remove the limit, sysadmins would probably not be much inclined to shorten the name, and the user with the older client is going to be the one who is confused. In such situations, I tend to give the users the advantage, and not the sysadmin... As a compromise, wouldn't it be possible to mangle the sharename, depending on the remote_arch? Most of the code should already be there, in mangle.c. Jacco -- Jacco de Leeuw |Fac.Phys,Math.&Comp Sc. |mailto:leeuw@wins.uva.nl J.C. van Wessemstr. 54 |University of Amsterdam| +31(0)756352068 1501VM Zaandam Holland |http://carol.wins.uva.nl/~leeuw/ Jean-Luc Picard did more for bald men than toupets do...
> > Tell us if you want 8 character length limited print share > > names or larger. If we were to remove this limitation and allow > > more than 8 characters then we will get complaints from some > > users who use older SMB clients (eg: old WfW, Older DOS > > clients, etc.). > > The various OS/2 clients seem to have a 20 character limit, but > the most recent ones (Warp Connect and Warp 4) come with full LPR > support, so it should not be that much of a problem.Just an FYI: I have found that Win95 has a limit of 13 characters for the printer share name and WinNT has a limit of 12 chars. They will both browse longer names (i.e. you can see them in the browse lists), however they get an error when trying to use them. These shares were created using the smb.conf rather than printcap. Keeping the names consistent across all the platforms (Unix, Win95, WinNT) is very important to us (we have enough printers already - 1400 at last count - without having to work out the real name of the printer) so we came up with a naming scheme that will work everywhere (max 12 chars, all lower case, no spaces or punct except '-'). If anyone has a way to break through this length limit on Win95 and WinNT. Let me know. Damian -- ______________________________________________________________________ * Damian Ivereigh * || || * Cisco Systems, Inc. * * MIS Printer Admin * .||||. .||||. * 408-526-4413 * * Linux Biggot * ..:||||||:..:||||||:.. * 800-800-1180 x64413 * * damian@cisco.com * cisco Systems, Inc. * Fax: 408-527-2563 * *______________________________________________________________________*