Re: [gentoo-releng] samba on the livecds

[Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org>]

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On Wed, 2004-06-30 at 09:05, Jeffrey Forman wrote:
> Maybe someone can clarify this for me..the LiveCD, is:
> 
> (1) the INSTALL cd we're all familiar with or
> (2) a Knoppix-like cd that boots into Gnome/KDE/<insert wm>
> 
> If (1), honestly...does someone NEED samba upon the install? if they
> have broadband, they can download the files anyways.

Our LiveCD is definitely #1.  If we decide to provide a #2 type CD, it
will be different than our install media.  One day it may even become
the "default" installation media, but for now, we want to keep the CD as
simple as possible, while still enabling the user to utilize as many
resources as he has available.  That means the ability to mount SMB
shares.  We might need to look at what is necessary to add proper SMB
mounting support.  I see no reason at all for adding SMB *sharing*
support.

Now, looking at /sbin/mount.smbfs, which is a symlink to
/usr/bin/smbmount, we see that it is a:

$ file smbmount
smbmount: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for
GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

Now, let's look at what it is linked against.  This is on my work
machine, so of course, USE flags will modify this list some, but the
list is *quite* long here.

$ ldd smbmount
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        libcrypt.so.1 => /lib/libcrypt.so.1 (0x40023000)
        libresolv.so.2 => /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x40050000)
        libnsl.so.1 => /lib/libnsl.so.1 (0x40062000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x40076000)
        libgssapi_krb5.so.2 => /usr/lib/libgssapi_krb5.so.2 (0x4007a000)
        libkrb5.so.3 => /usr/lib/libkrb5.so.3 (0x40090000)
        libk5crypto.so.3 => /usr/lib/libk5crypto.so.3 (0x400fc000)
        libcom_err.so.3 => /usr/lib/libcom_err.so.3 (0x40126000)
        libldap.so.2 => /usr/lib/libldap.so.2 (0x40129000)
        liblber.so.2 => /usr/lib/liblber.so.2 (0x40159000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40167000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
        libssl.so.0.9.7 => /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.7 (0x40277000)
        libcrypto.so.0.9.7 => /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7 (0x402a7000)

Now, I could see that adding a hefty weight to our install media.  If we
really need to add samba to the LiveCD, then I think that we need to
work something out.

Perhaps it could be us adding a minimal smbmount to the system via
livecd-tools and USE=samba?  I wouldn't have a problem with that, and it
wouldn't introduce the feared samba-client garbage that other
distributions are so fond of.  It would only get installed on the
LiveCD, and it would build independent of the system's USE, so we would
control the dependencies required.

How does this sound to everyone?

> If (2), this would be the only situation where I could see sticking what
> is required for samba on the cd. It gives the users the ability to test
> the waters of how easily they can share files linux <-> Windows.

I would definitely see the reasoning for adding a full-blown samba to
such a CD, as many people would be comparing us to Windows, and most
likely operating on a Windows network.

> I guess I am just concerned with adding bloat (someone mentioned another
> 22MB) to the cd where it's just not needed.

Bloat is very bad on our CD.  They are large enough as it is.  It is my
personal mission to try to reduce the size of the LiveCD, as it has
grown quite a bit since the 1.2 days.

I tend to think that a better solution now that we will have a BT
distribution system, would be to possibly come out with a few
specialized CDs, or even a "jumbo" CD with all the "extras" that we
don't want to add to the regular LiveCD.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering QA Manager/Games Developer
Gentoo Linux

Is your power animal a penguin?

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