I'll bite... smb/cifs is not a simple protocol suite, see my comments in-line
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Paul D. DeRocco <pdero...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > The requirements for such a system are much smaller than what Samba > provides: > > * It only needs to serve files, not printers or other resources. smb without an AD domain needs rpc and for network browsing nmb. > * It doesn't need to deal with domains, let alone be a domain controller. smb namespacing (for lack a better word) effectively treats a single standalone PC as a domain. I know this is over-simplification/generalization... > > * It doesn't need to provide separate user accounts. I guess you could compile it so that it only anon connections are used, but cifs still has to deal with users > > * The only security it needs is perhaps a password for reading, and maybe a > different password for writing. cifs doesn't do this. the old smb version that win95 used can, but modern OS's don't like talking to them. > > * Since these devices are generally closed boxes with no general-purpose > command line interface, there's no need to encrypt passwords internally. smb/cifs expect a challenge/response hash system. if you store only plain text on the server, you'd have to generate the hash every time to want to have auth. > > * It can assume it's being connected to a fully functional network, so > doesn't need to be a master browser. > it still has to participate or you won't be able to browse to it. > 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? what you want as an end product is totally possible, and practical. It may even be feasible to make a bare cifs server that can't be browsed and you have to connect to by IP, but I don't think most people expect this. Basing it off the existing samba codebase is probably going to be a lot more work than just writing it from scratch. Maybe a few methods or classes can be pulled from samba as a start. maybe. however, all the use cases you've mentioned can be accomplished via ftp or http, for which there are a few light weight server options already and all OS's already include clients for. -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
