Re: GNOME-Samba interface

[Craig Kelley <ink inconnu isu edu>]

> > True, but that is not good enough; we should also be able to select
> > specific connections (analyze the output of smbstatus, or use the
> > smbstatus routines internal to Samba) and nuke them which would require
> > root as well. 
> 
> 	Sounds complicated.  For a first version, I'd just kill the smbd
> server (thus closing all connections) and restart it with the new smb.conf
> file.

That's fine for a workstation, but unacceptable on a server (but then
again, servers aren't running GNOME).  It really isn't that difficult --
look at the KDE and linuxconf samba tools.

> > Look at the source of smbpasswd; it contains simple code to read the
> > smbpasswd file.  If you *really* want to parse this sucker, it may be a
> > good idea to simply link against the Samba parsing objects (the new 2.0
> > and CVS code bases are very programmer-friendly [unlike the pre-2.0 code
> > which was a nightmare of spaghetti]) 
> 
> 	I may be misunderstanding you here, but what does parsing the
> smbpasswd file have to do with parsing smb.conf?

Ooops.  I meant to say "simple code to read the smb.conf file".  Samba
uses a pretty straight-forward method (API) for all the bits to be able to
access configuration information.  SWAT is another good example.

> > > 1) Allowing a regular user to "share" a directory, ANY directory (whether
> > > its their own or not) is a serious security risk.  A cracker could
> > > theoretically get full access to your filesystem if things are set up
> > > improperly in your smb.conf, so allowing normal users to mess with it is
> > > a no-no.
> > 
> > Or, at least, a feature which should be reserved for the next incarnation
> > of this project.
> 
> 	If this Samba/GMC interface makes it into the 'standard'
> distribution of Gnome and it allows a normal user to export SMB shares,
> many people will forever view Gnome security as pitiful as MS Windows
> security.
>
> 	If you want to export an SMB share, you should know the root
> password.  Period.  The only other secure option would be to devise a
> grandiose security scheme where users would somehow only be able to export
> directories which they own, but off the top of my head I don't see how you
> could do that with Samba...

A debate for another time.