Re: New pre-2.0.31 patches..

Greg Stark (gsstark@mit.edu)
Wed, 6 Aug 1997 01:27:49 -0400 (EDT)


In the smbmount man page the following paragraph appears:

> If neither -n nor -P are given, smbmount prompts for a
> password. This makes it difficult to use in scripts
> such as /etc/rc. But that's not smbmount's fault, but a
> general problem with the Lan Manager security model. If
> anybody has a satisfying solution to this problem,
> please tell me.

Well, i have an idea that i think is very satisfying, but
it may be considered "too complex" or "too hard".

My idea is basically to multiplex the mount point between
all the users who need it. When a mount point is created
an smb session is (optionally) started as guest. Then the
user runs a client, say "smbauth", to authenticate and to
initiate smb sessions with their privileges. Each user is
given a mapping of mount points to smb sessions to use.

Then simply creating a mount would never need a password,
and multiple users could use the same mount with only the
privileges their own. As a result the mounts could be in
/etc/fstab just like any other filesystem.

A typical usage in this setup might look like:

/etc/fstab:
/dev/hda1 /dos vfat noauto,user
//wfw/c /mnt/wfw-c smb defaults
//wfw/d /mnt/wfw-d smb noguest
//w95/c /mnt/w95-c smb noguest

Then when i log in:
$ ls /mnt/w95-c
ls: /mnt/w95-c: Permission denied
$ smbauth /mnt/w95-c
Password:
$ ls /mnt/w95-c
...
$ ls /mnt/wfw-c
... [with guest privileges]
$ smbauth --server wfw
Password:
$ ls /mnt/wfw-c
... [with my privileges]

or simply:
$ smbauth --all
Password:
$