John,
This isn't entirely fair. There are three kinds of newbies, and I'll say for the purposes of this thread that newbies also may be new to Linux/UNIX, not just to Samba: the first kind is lazy and goes running for help at the drop of a bug and doesn't bother to read the docs first. This kind deserves your rant. The second kind doesn't know documentation exists--they don't deserve your rant; they need only a pointer to the docs--as you provided below, in addition. The third kind has read the docs and still has a problem, else they wouldn't be on the mailing list looking for help. We don't deserve your rant, either. And we've read the docs despite what seem to be a high error rate in them that confuses the diagnostic outcomes. (For instance, in Chapt 1 of the HOWTO, on connecting to a Remote SMB Client, we're told to run "net use d: \\servername\service. When I do that, I simply get the error back that the local device is already in use. Of course--d: is a logical partition on my PC. I have to figure out that you meant "d:" to be generic, in the same spirit as "servername." Maybe I should have recognized that a priori, but I didn't. Newbies make mistakes like that. In the Samba Checklist, Step 4, we're told to run "nmblookup - B BIGSERVER_SAMBA_." This seems to have two typos in it, yet as a newbie, I'm unsure. Using - B (with the space) just has nmblookup look for the IP address of the machine B, also, which, of course it cannot find. Or were we supposed to use "-B" -- without the space? But then to what broadcast address, as that's what that switch calls for? Or is "nmblookup - servername" what was truly meant? And the _SAMBA_ suffix appended to our server's name means that that machine cannot be found by nmblookup, either--unless someone actually has appended that suffix to their machine name. the "- B", "-B", "-" confusion is repeated throughout the checklist. Further, in step 6, we're told to try "nmblookup - d 2 '*' ". This leads to further error, as nmblookup cannot find either machine d or 2. It turns out we're supposed to use "-d" (no space).)
For all that, we in this third kind of newbie, get lumped in with the first kind, and our problems get utterly ignored. It's true enough that you're all volunteers, helping out in addition to your day jobs, and really your efforts are appreciated a great deal. But most of us newbies are trying to learn this stuff, also in addition to our own day jobs.
Or are we on the wrong mailing lists? If there are other Samba mailing lists intended for newbies, please point us there.
</rant>
Eric Hines
At 05/06/05 10:08, you wrote:
Jon,
Please, please use the resources we provide before posting questions like this. Did you read the book "Samba-3 by Example" before you asked your questions here? I think you will find a fully working solution in chapter 3.
The latest version (still being edited) can be downloaded from: http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/Samba-Guide.pdf
Note: The book uses SUSE Linux as its reference base so you will beed to adjust pathes and Samba binary names according to the way Mandrake have named the binary files .
- John T.
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