Topic: I-Bay Names

[Steve McClary]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd sure like to get past the naming restrictions on i-bays ("The information bay name should contain only lower-case letters, numbers, periods, and underscores, and should start with a lower-case letter.").

I would like to fit e-smith servers directly into an existing network of file servers, without having to change anything at the client workstations. It's sort of embrassing that these old Win95 peer-to-peer file sharing computers are more flexible than e-smith when it comes to naming the share!

[Buddy]

The I-Bay naming conventions are for your protection the reason for this that Linux is designed for case sensitive files, unlike Dos or Windows for that matter a Linux share Apps is not the same as apps, aPps or ApPs they are all different directories.   The way samba works is that it will basically only allow one file with the exact same spelling in any given directory, this is fine for files but directories have to be created before the smb.conf file is modified.   Samba likes to have shares in a certain format and only one share that is spelled on way because of limitations in Windows machines that interpret Apps and ApPs as the same folder which causes confusion in Windows.  E-smith did the right thing forcing you to a set of conventions if not you could have made directories that either Samba or Windows Clients could not handle.   If you only have a couple of folders that you are wanting to change the spelling od you may telnet in create the folders the way you like them then manually edit the 10globals file located in /etc/e-smith/templates/smb.conf/ directory to indicate the changes you want then add an Ibay so that the smb.conf file gets updated for the changes.  The easiest way however is to edit 10globals template and enable the Domain login go to the workstations and enable Domain login in the Client for Microsoft Windows.  You can then edit the login.bat file located in the login share to automatically map drives for you.  If you need any help let me know.

[Steve McClary]

Well, I can see how the case restriction is needed internally, but couldn't we give ibays Netbios names for purposes of the Windows network, the way you name the shares in smb.conf? And even if you didn't do that, I still don't see the need for not allowing hyphens, at least. There is also a twelve-character length restriction, and I know Linux directories can have names a lot longer than that!

Anyway, flexible naming of i_bays remains on my wish list.

Steve

[Charlie Brady]

Steve McClary wrote:
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd sure like to get past
> the naming restrictions on i-bays ("The information bay name
> should contain only lower-case letters, numbers, periods, and
> underscores, and should start with a lower-case letter.").
>
> I would like to fit e-smith servers directly into an existing
> network of file servers, without having to change anything at
> the client workstations.

Which particular naming restriction would you like to remove? I presume that you don't wish to have names with embedded BEL characters (^G), but what additional punctuation would you like?

Charlie

[Charlie Brady]

Steve McClary wrote:

> And even if you didn't do that, I still don't
> see the need for not allowing hyphens, at least.

Nor do I. I'll look into that matter.

> There is
> also a twelve-character length restriction, and I know Linux
> directories can have names a lot longer than that!

Yes they can, but some versions of Windows9x cannot access shares with names longer than 12 characters. You can remove the restriction if you like - the is a maxIbayNameLength configuration parameter.

Regards

Charlie

[Steve McClary]

Both of those are good to know- didn't know there was a length restriction for any Win9x or that you could modify the parameter. Thanks for the information!

As far as which characters I'd like to see, personally hyphens and spaces (I know spaces can be a real headache, but this is a _wish_ list after all!) would be all I need to be able to duplicate the Windows share names I have on my network. Others might have more suggestions.

Steve