Re: Authentication Cache for libsmb (gnome-vfs-extras)

[Alex Graveley <alex ximian com>]

Hi,

On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 18:45, Knut Neumann rz uni-duesseldorf de wrote:
> the attached patch will add an authentication cache system to libsmb:

No patch attached :-)

> You can query for an authentication info either by server (and share)
> or by uri. In the latter case it is checked if an authentication is
> provided with the uri - which will be used (and cached) then.
> Otherwise authentication is queried by server (and share).
> Authentications are cached by server (and if given by share).
> Additionally the authentication used to log into a share is cached
> with a special key. That is in case there is no cached authentication
> when querying for another share on that server it can be used as a
> fallback. If a previous attempt failed authentication will be queried
> by dialog (and cached) either way.

Have you seen the ximian-smb branch of gnome-vfs-extras?  It seems to
perform this same function.  Maybe you could compare this with your work
and see if there are any holes between the two?

> There are still some issues with smb authentication, though not
> directly related to the patch:
> 
> (1) There is no per connection auth caching, so if there are two
> nautilus windows open with smb connections and you change
> authentication in one it will automatically change for the other too. 
> 
> (2) There is still no way to log into a server so you can access user
> dependent shares (like eg home directories). I do not fully understand
> how to do that right now: it seems like you can alway anonymously log
> into a samba servers IPC share, so that      one would have to query
> for an auth before logging into the IPC share. But that would be a
> horror for workgroups with lots of share-based-auth servers. Still
> since 2000/NT/XP is able to recognize wether the server has user- or
> share-based authentication.

The difference is that when using WinNT, valid authorization data from
the login session is always passed to the server so it knows which
directories to show.  This works when mounting with smbmount because you
specify the username/password at mount time.  Unfortunately, we don't
have this information when you first start browsing.

> (3) When using smb://<the-servers-ip> on a server that is a master
> browser you get not only the servers shares listed in the nautilus
> view, but as well some of the other servers in the workgroup. 

The ximian-smb branch has code to list out domains under smb: and allow
traversal.  Again, you may want to see how the two compare.

> I will have a look into (1) and (2) later this week, so if anyone has
> any idea I would really appreciate it.

Great to see someone looking at this.

-Alex

-- 
 on the canvass of life, incompetence is my paintbrush.