samba - Nov 2022 - linux-schools samba ubuntu packages: it is just awful

Hi!

After several people (here and elsewhere) asked me about
linux-schools ubuntu ppa with samba packages, I took a
look at the thing.  And was rather shocked.

Basically, what they did was took the debian package of
samba-4.15 (the one before the changes in samba which
leads to quite significant changes in packaging), and
REMOVED WHOLE PACKAGING from there.

The end result is that they have single new package
named "samba4" with *everything* samba, and a lot of
dummy empty packages for all subpackages which were
in debian/ubuntu (client, winbind, pam, etc).

I'd say it is a package vandalism, so to say, it is
a very hackish way to do things, it is ruining a
distribution.  Why? Because other packages depend
on, say, libsmbclient, - vlc, nautilus, whatever,
but now libsmbclient is just an empty package which
actually provides nothing. You install it instead
of the real libsmbclient, and the packages which
used libsmbclient.so just stop working with error
"unable to load libsmbclient.so".  The result is
a Big Mess (tm).

It is more: after installing this mess, it is quite
difficult to roll it back into a normal system...

I'm not compelling with them, there's no single reason
for me to do that - I mean, I'm writing this as someone
who published real samba "ppa" on our site recently. I
don't need to fight competitors - I gain nothing at all
by publishing my repo or by doing debian packaging in
the first place.

But I do want to warn ubuntu users strongly against using this
schools samba ppa.  It is just an awful way to packaging.
There's no reason to believe me, - just go take a look
at their packages.

*SIGH*.

Thanks,

/mjt

Hello mjt, Hello Samba,

we used their samba 4.16 packages on an ubuntu system (no debian 
backports :( ) and the ad auth "just broke". Debugging it revealed
that
the .so file is missing from the libpam-winbind packages.

We've switched to your ubuntu package and had to completly purge the old 
ones install yours.

Then it worked.

Just my 2 cents.

So .. thanks mjt for your packages and +1 from us to avoid the 
linuxschools project.

Have a nice day, Matthias K?hne.

Am 15.11.22 um 12:01 schrieb Michael Tokarev via samba:
> Hi!
>
> After several people (here and elsewhere) asked me about
> linux-schools ubuntu ppa with samba packages, I took a
> look at the thing.? And was rather shocked.
>
> Basically, what they did was took the debian package of
> samba-4.15 (the one before the changes in samba which
> leads to quite significant changes in packaging), and
> REMOVED WHOLE PACKAGING from there.
>
> The end result is that they have single new package
> named "samba4" with *everything* samba, and a lot of
> dummy empty packages for all subpackages which were
> in debian/ubuntu (client, winbind, pam, etc).
>
> I'd say it is a package vandalism, so to say, it is
> a very hackish way to do things, it is ruining a
> distribution.? Why? Because other packages depend
> on, say, libsmbclient, - vlc, nautilus, whatever,
> but now libsmbclient is just an empty package which
> actually provides nothing. You install it instead
> of the real libsmbclient, and the packages which
> used libsmbclient.so just stop working with error
> "unable to load libsmbclient.so".? The result is
> a Big Mess (tm).
>
> It is more: after installing this mess, it is quite
> difficult to roll it back into a normal system...
>
> I'm not compelling with them, there's no single reason
> for me to do that - I mean, I'm writing this as someone
> who published real samba "ppa" on our site recently. I
> don't need to fight competitors - I gain nothing at all
> by publishing my repo or by doing debian packaging in
> the first place.
>
> But I do want to warn ubuntu users strongly against using this
> schools samba ppa.? It is just an awful way to packaging.
> There's no reason to believe me, - just go take a look
> at their packages.
>
> *SIGH*.
>
> Thanks,
>
> /mjt
>
-- 
Matthias K?hne
Senior Webentwickler
Datenschutzbeauftragter

Ellerhold Aktiengesellschaft
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On 15/11/2022 11:01, Michael Tokarev via samba wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> After several people (here and elsewhere) asked me about
> linux-schools ubuntu ppa with samba packages, I took a
> look at the thing.? And was rather shocked.
> 
> Basically, what they did was took the debian package of
> samba-4.15 (the one before the changes in samba which
> leads to quite significant changes in packaging), and
> REMOVED WHOLE PACKAGING from there.
> 
> The end result is that they have single new package
> named "samba4" with *everything* samba, and a lot of
> dummy empty packages for all subpackages which were
> in debian/ubuntu (client, winbind, pam, etc).
> 
> I'd say it is a package vandalism, so to say, it is
> a very hackish way to do things, it is ruining a
> distribution.? Why? Because other packages depend
> on, say, libsmbclient, - vlc, nautilus, whatever,
> but now libsmbclient is just an empty package which
> actually provides nothing. You install it instead
> of the real libsmbclient, and the packages which
> used libsmbclient.so just stop working with error
> "unable to load libsmbclient.so".? The result is
> a Big Mess (tm).
> 
> It is more: after installing this mess, it is quite
> difficult to roll it back into a normal system...
> 
> I'm not compelling with them, there's no single reason
> for me to do that - I mean, I'm writing this as someone
> who published real samba "ppa" on our site recently. I
> don't need to fight competitors - I gain nothing at all
> by publishing my repo or by doing debian packaging in
> the first place.
> 
> But I do want to warn ubuntu users strongly against using this
> schools samba ppa.? It is just an awful way to packaging.
> There's no reason to believe me, - just go take a look
> at their packages.
> 
> *SIGH*.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> /mjt
> 
I did wonder about Karoshi linux (that is what the Linux schools distro 
is called). They do some very strange things, such as:

They use DC's as fileservers, now I know that this is possible, but with 
multiple DC's and they do not seem to suggest using a Unix domain member 
as a fileserver etc.

They use nslcd on the DC's for ID's, which they obtain from idmap.ldb 
(yes, they use the xidNumbers in the 3000000 range for uidNumber & 
gidNumber attributes)

While they use multiple DC's and provide a gui to manage each, this 
appears to be on an individual DC basis, somehow combined with an SQL 
database (Hello, AD is a database).

All in all, it is a bit of a mess, so I am not surprised that their 
Samba packages are also a mess.

Rowland