[Punk Walrus]

I was hoping someone would have some ideas here about what I may be doing wrong. I have set up several OpenBSD servers, got Samba running on them without a hitch, and I have been asked to make it "easier" for those who log in to use the smbsh they are used to on their LINUX boxes (they have a lot of PERL scripts that rely on the mounted /smb directory).

I recompiled samba (v2.2.5) with the "--with-smbwrappers" option, and while it generated no errors in configure/make/make install... it didn't seem to install smbsh (for instance, it's not in the /usr/local/samba/bin/ directory... or anywhere else on the machines, for that matter). Asking around, a guy in our lab said that BSD does not support the smbsh, which is why he's still using LINUX (and why, IMHO, he got hacked on a default Redhat install once). Sometimes this guy knows his stuff, and sometimes he just gives up and makes stuff up to make it look like he knows his stuff. Trouble is, you can't tell which is which. So I went on the net, and didn't find anything that specifically said "no smbsh on BSD." I did find some cryptic stuff about smbfs, but it just confused me even more.

If smbsh does not work, what would you suggest to make it easier for PERL scripts on OpenBSD to connect to a smb share (Windows, LINUX, or OpenBSD) as if it were a simple URL (like /smb/Computer1/shardir/file.dat)? It needs to be fairly secure from the server end, although, I realize a good packet sniffer would find anything on the network, so I can't help that except have a closed network.

[|MiNi0n|]

I'm not sure I follow entirely but I'd suggest looking at either Sharity Light or smbmount, or depending on your situation why not NFS?

[elmore]

AFAIK neither are supported yet in OpenBSD stable. You might have some luck checking out the CURRENT branch but I couldn;t speak for its security. I believe FreeBSD and NetBSD both have support for smbsh and smbfs. I know at least on FreeBSD you can make smbsh right out of the ports now. With regards to OpenBSD you might do as |MiNi0n| says and use sharity. I believe the main deiiference is sharity is user initiated whereas smbsh is loaded as a kernel module. Here's a useful search string ot two that may benefit you.

http://www.google.com/bsd?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=smbfs+
http://www.google.com/bsd?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=smbfs+%2B+OpenBSD
http://www.google.com/bsd?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=smbfs+%2B+FreeBSD

[elmore]

Hey have you gotten this resolved?

[Punk Walrus]

Not yet. I work at a kind of job where there are periods of innovation mixed with periods of maintance and then sheer panic. During not-to-recent periods when I have time to sit, think, and read, I have been considering |MiNi0n|'s NFS suggestion. At our company, for security reasons, NFS is blocked, but my lab has the advantage of being a separate contained system with only one, very regulated, bottleneck in the form of an old, trusty Cisco router to lead us to the outside world and the main office network (or as we like to say, "Marketing's Virus du'jour"). So I may be able to use this as long as the router will be able to screen out NFS packets, but I will also have to consider if there are any default broadcasts like Netbeui and Appletalk. From what little I have seen (and I mean little), NFS is a single connection only, and it's not another box screaming "I'm here, I'm here!" every 3 seconds. And it does seem to offer what I am looking for. Now if I have the time to sit and figure out how it works... it took me six months to get Samba right (and secure).

Basically, we have guys who write PERL scripts all day, and they want simple URLs to things. They don't want to launch some program everytime they have to copy or edit files, they don't want to learn new crap, and they want just for me to say:

"To get from LabHorse22 from LabMule12, just have your script use the URL /some/place/LabHorse22/directory/file_they_want_to_edit"

Can you tell I deal with the Window-centric? We can't use FTP, Telnet, or RLogin because that's too insecure, and OpenSSH just made them go, "Oh, please... we don't have time for this."

After finding out Microsoft wouldn't give out site licenses anymore, the pressure has been on to use alternatives, but everyone here is dragging their heels.

[pinhead]

for unix to unix file share i would definitely be considering NFS (SMB is excellent but really designed for talking to bill which NFS does not excel at - PCNFS is a piece of crap)

check for secured nfs if you can ditch the UDP on your platforms
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=4072/sam0203d/sam0203d.htm

old but also of interest
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1994-15.html

[Punk Walrus]

Sorry for the long... year late reply. Here's what we ended up doing:

We put up one big Red Hat box with a RAID5 array. All shares (SMB,NFS) point to the same directories on the box.

- Windows: It's mapped as a network drive
- Linux: Mapped as Samba mount or NFS in fstab
- OpenBSD: Mapped in NFS manually (we don't need shares much)

It all worked out well in the end.

[cod3fr3ak]

Hey guys. I am looking to do sorta the same thing. I am using this new application called SlimServer to stream my mp3 collect to my office at work. Only problem is that the server software runs on windows, and my mp3 also reside on a windows file server ( I need VMWare). Anyway the server software is a major resource hog, pent4 2.4Ghz with 1.5 GB of ram. I have a spare BSD box and I wanted to run the perl version of the server. Now my problem is getting the samba client on the obsd box to mount a windows share like it was a nfs partition so the server app can find my mp3s. Any suggestions?

[cod3fr3ak]

So far I've been looking at sharity-lite as well...

[cod3fr3ak]

DONE! Sharity light works perfectly!