I'm working on a couple of Yocto Project based embedded projects, one using a Gumstix Overo board and the other using an Intel Atom motherboard. Both need a simple Samba server, which isn't included in the standard build. The only existing Yocto-compatible recipe for Samba is an OpenEmbedded one for version 3.6.8. I was quite surprised to find that adding Samba almost tripled the size of my Atom build. I understand that version 4 is quite a bit smaller, but we're still talking many tens of megabytes of stuff.
I would think there would be lots of people in my boat, who are doing embedded systems and who would like to include a really simple SMB file server. For instance, a data acquisition system needs to record large amounts of data to a local disk, and then provide access to it over a network so people can bring it into Matlab or other tools. A CNC machine tool system needs a way to have Gerber or other files loaded into them. A media server needs to be able to serve up video or audio files. Any embedded device needs to have a way of being fed configuration data, or having its firmware upgraded. The requirements for such a system are much smaller than what Samba provides: * It only needs to serve files, not printers or other resources. * It doesn't need a client, or any of the functionality related to a client. * It doesn't need to deal with domains, let alone be a domain controller. * It doesn't need to provide separate user accounts. * The only security it needs is perhaps a password for reading, and maybe a different password for writing. * Since these devices are generally closed boxes with no general-purpose command line interface, there's no need to encrypt passwords internally. * It can assume it's being connected to a fully functional network, so doesn't need to be a master browser. * It doesn't need to support multiple interfaces. * Its only configuration parameters would be a machine name, workgroup name, list of shared folders, and one or two passwords per shared folder. * It doesn't need most of the command line tools currently used to configure, monitor and debug the system. Sounds to me like the sort of thing that could be done in under a megabyte. I wonder if there's a way to build such a mini-Samba out of the existing Samba code base. It's certainly way above my abilities, but it may be something that someone on the Samba team could do without mounting a major development effort. How many other people would find such a system useful? -- Ciao, Paul D. DeRocco Paul mailto:pdero...@ix.netcom.com -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
