A while back, I -complained -about the fact that it is not possible with the provided schemas -for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets -of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
- -In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make -the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with -the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one -computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
- -If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change -without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I -do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for -Debian Edu.
- -Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change -the -DHCP -schema to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas -available today from IETF.
+A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use +Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian +Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the +access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we +knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to +mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of +struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.
+ +The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home +directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only +work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the +underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows +file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics, +and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they +want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.
+ +As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share +with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like +OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as +it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might +help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:
---- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
-+++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
-@@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
- objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
- NAME 'dhcpHost'
- DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
-- SUP top
-+ SUP top AUXILIARY
- MUST cn
- MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
- X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
+/*
+ * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
+ * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
+ * directory.
+ * License: GPL v2 or later
+ *
+ * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
+ * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
+*/
+
+#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
+#define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
+#define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
+
+#define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
+
+#include <errno.h>
+#include <fcntl.h>
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <string.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <sys/file.h>
+#include <sys/stat.h>
+#include <sys/types.h>
+#include <unistd.h>
+
+#ifdef TEST_SQLITE
+/*
+ * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
+ * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
+ * below.
+ * See also <URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
+ */
+#include <sqlite3.h>
+#define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
+ "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
+int test_sqlite_open(void) {
+ char *zErrMsg;
+ char *name = "testsqlite.db";
+ sqlite3 *db=NULL;
+ unlink(name);
+ int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
+ if( rc ){
+ printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
+ sqlite3_close(db);
+ return -1;
+ }
+
+ /* create tables */
+ rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL, 0, &zErrMsg);
+ if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
+ printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
+ sqlite3_close(db);
+ return -1;
+ }
+ printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
+ sqlite3_close(db);
+ return 0;
+}
+#endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
+
+/*
+ * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
+ * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003. This is
+ * done in the sqlite3 library.
+ * See also
+ * <URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
+ * POSIX specification
+ * <URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
+ */
+int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
+ struct flock fl;
+ char *name = "testsqlite.db";
+ unlink(name);
+ int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
+ printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
+
+ fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
+ fl.l_pid = getpid();
+ printf(" Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741824;
+ fl.l_len = 1;
+ fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741826;
+ fl.l_len = 510;
+ fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741824;
+ fl.l_len = 1;
+ fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741824;
+ fl.l_len = 1;
+ fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741826;
+ fl.l_len = 510;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741824;
+ fl.l_len = 2;
+ fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ close(fd);
+ return 0;
+}
+
+/*
+ * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
+ * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
+ * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
+ * slowing down file operations.
+ */
+int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
+#define LEVELS 5
+ char *path = strdup("test");
+ char *dirs[LEVELS];
+ int level;
+ printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
+ for (level = 0; level < LEVELS; level++) {
+ char *newpath = NULL;
+ if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
+ printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
+ path, strerror(errno));
+ break;
+ }
+ asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
+ free(path);
+ path = newpath;
+ }
+ return 0;
+}
+
+/*
+ * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
+ * KDE.
+ */
+int test_symlinks(void) {
+ printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
+ unlink("symlink");
+ if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
+ printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
+ return 0;
+}
+
+int main(int argc, char **argv) {
+ printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
+ test_symlinks();
+ test_subdirectory_creation();
+#ifdef TEST_SQLITE
+ test_sqlite_open();
+#endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
+ test_gcompris_locking();
+ return 0;
+}
-I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian -Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config -package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
+When everything is working, it should print something like +this:
-If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu, -please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
++Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system +info: testing symlink creation +info: testing subdirectory creation +info: sqlite worked +info: testing fcntl locking + Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824 + Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826 + Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824 + Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824 + Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826 + Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824 ++ +
I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one +of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a +read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking +the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the +CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory +meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making +OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was +not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.
+ +Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need +it. :)