[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#437534: Bug#437534: winbind: please add wins to nsswitch.conf by default

[Lukasz Szybalski]

Christian Perrier wrote:
> tags 437534 wontfix
> thanks
>
> Quoting Lukasz Szybalski (lszybalski at uniqueinsuranceco.com):
>   
>> Hello,
>> As a Programmer and IT with 60 users on the network and 6 servers, with 
>> 3 internal webistes I have to say that automatically resolving names via 
>> WINS hostname should be enabled by default!!!
>>     
>
> That is your opinion.
>
> As in charge of personal computing in an organisation with 1000 users
> on the network, dozens of servers and an undertermined number of
> websites, this is not mine. We resolve names with the DNS.
>
>   
DNS lookup is a little too much for home network and small business network.

>> 1. Not a whole lot of people know how and which program is responsible 
>> for hostname resolution. (It took me 3 months before I found myself on a 
>> right track)
>> 2. I see a lot of use for it. Internal websites, they all use hostname 
>> instead of ip addresses. You are looking for a computer share but you 
>> don't know which server its on? If this is enabled you can easily find 
>> it. If its not enabled then you have to switch to windows because 
>> windows has it as a default, and you don't have to to be searching 3 
>> months on how to enable hostname lookup. (That is bad!)
>> 3. Windows has this feature enabled and as soon as you need to connect 
>> to a dynamic ip computer that changes its ip address every few days, you 
>> will love the fact that its enabled. (Not sure how mac does it)
>>
>> I don't see ANY problems with enabling it by default? People are asking 
>> for it, therefore this bug, so what is stopping us from making it happen?
>>     
>
>   


> Anyway, this is the Debian policy that packages do *not* modify
> configuration files owned by another package. 
>
> /etc/nsswitch.conf is provided and owned by base-files. As far as I
> know, no package providing Name Service Switch libraries does modify
> that file and I actually don't see any reason for winbind to do
> so....even by asking to users.
>
>   
Except for DNS  setup, is there a program that would allow hostname 
resolution just like winbind does for dynamic ip computers?

> Other samba package maintainers or Samba upstream developers on the
> list, please feel free to object but my understanding is that this bug
> report is to be tagged wontfix.
>   
I'm sure samba is capable of looking up the computers by hostname, but 
is it part of samba if I do something like this:

ping myservername

I don't know if this is related to samba? Where would I go to get more 
clarification on status of debian hostname resolution .

Lucas