Section 12.9. Extra Resources

12.9. Extra Resources

At some point during your work with Samba, you'll want to turn go online for news, updates, and aid.

12.9.1. Documentation and FAQs

Samba ships with a large set of documentation files, and it is well worth the effort to at least browse through them, either in the distribution directory on your computer under docs or online at the Samba web site: http://www.samba.org. The most current FAQ list, bug information, and distribution locations are located at the web site, with links to all the Samba manual pages and HOWTOs. There is also a newly launched Wiki for the Samba community, hosted at http://wiki.samba.org.

12.9.2. Samba Mailing Lists, Newsgroups, and IRC

The following are mailing lists for support with Samba. See https://lists.samba.org for information on subscribing and unsubscribing to these mailing lists:

[e-mail]

This is the primary mailing list for the Samba user community and for general questions and discussion regarding Samba.

[e-mail]

This mailing list focuses on the Samba development and is where Samba programmers coordinate discussion of the Samba code.

[e-mail]

This low-noise list is for receiving news regarding Samba, such as announcements of new releases.

[e-mail]

By subscribing to this list, you automatically receive a message every time one of the Samba developers updates the Samba source code in the subversion repository. You might want to do this if you are waiting for a specific bug fix or feature to be applied. To avoid congesting your email inbox, we suggest using the digest feature, which consolidates messages into a smaller number of emails.

Searchable versions of the Samba mailing list archives can be found online at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com.

When posting messages to the Samba mailing lists, keep in mind that you are sending your message to a large audience. A well-formulated, concise question or comment with a precise and informative subject line is more likely to be answered, and a poorly considered message is very likely to be ignored. Once you post a request for help, keep poking at the problem yourself. Most of us have had the experience of posting a message containing hundreds of lines of intricate detail, only to solve the problem an hour later after the article has blazed its way across several continents. The rule of thumb goes something like this: the more folks who have read your request, the more likely that at least one person will be able to identify a solution.

The primary newsgroup for Samba is comp.protocols.smb. And although the main Samba discussion is now on the project's mailing lists, this vast pool of Usenet knowledge has developed into something that has made it into an invaluable resource: a memory. Archival and search sites such as the one at Google (http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search) have made sifting through years of valuable solutions as simple as a few mouse clicks.

When searching a newsgroup, try to be as specific as possible, but not too wordy. Searching on actual error messages is best. If you don't find an answer immediately in the newsgroup, resist the temptation to post a request for help until you've done a bit more work on the problem. You might find that the answer is in an FAQ or one of the many documentation files that ship with Samba, or a solution might become evident when you run one of Samba's diagnostic tools.

If you prefer interactive discussion, both users and developers have formed a community at irc.freenode.net on the #samba and #samba-technical channels. The former is for talking to other Samba users and dealing with installation or configuration issues. You will find random technical discussions between developers on the latter channel.

12.9.3. Filing a Bug Report

Sometimes no amount if troubleshooting can diagnose an error because you have found a legitimate bug in Samba. Samba developers use Bugzilla for tracking defects. You can search the open bug reports and file your own at https://bugzilla.samba.org. When filing a new bug, remember to include these important pieces of information:

• The version of Samba that exhibits the defect.

• Details of the server's operating system, including patch level and kernel revision.

• The CIFS client that exposes the problem. For Windows clients, include the operating system and installed service pack.

• The steps to be taken to reproduce the bug.

• What behavior you expected from Samba.

Be prepared to supply any additional logs or network traces that might be requested by developers. It is also a good idea to continue to try to reproduce the failure against the most current production Samba release. If the defect has been fixed, make sure that you update the bug report and let the developers know.