OT: Support vs Advice (was: Re: Filepro-list Digest, Vol 42, Issue 50)

[Fairlight]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2007 at 11:53:28AM -0400, after drawing runes in goat's blood,
Boaz Bezborodko cast forth these immortal, mystical words:
> No offense, Mark, but you were the one who was most hostile to my 
> request for assistance in what I would have to know or learn to move 
> forward.  An example of what I was looking for was a list or some links 
> to some of the basic aspects of what I was looking to do.

None taken.  No offense back.

You're confusing honesty with hostility.  To quote some forgotten source,
"Do you want polite, or do you want sincere?"  A lot of people confuse the
two where I'm concerned.

> For example, if someone was looking to set up a Samba server I would 
> tell them to look up some basics (in no particular order and not 
> comprehensive)

I'd volunteer to do it for them as a paid service, but that's part of my
business model.  Advice is only free to an extent.  Support is paid.

> -- Understand Linux security via file permissions etc.

A lot of people -still- don't, based on the audit results I end up seeing.
Don't start me.  I'll recap (to quote Jay) with my article URL:

http://www.fairlite.com/fc/articles/mode-essay.shtml

> -- Decide if you need better granularity.  If you do then explore using 
> ACLs and read up on Samba and its implementation of ACLs (I decided I 
> didn't need to bother) and get a later version of Samba to support it.

"Read the samba docs," is the free version.

> -- Forget SELinux (as per your instructions- thanks for that help in 
> case I forgot to thank you before) unless you absolutely need the extra 
> protection--and most don't.

You're welcome.  :)

> -- Install Webmin for some basic functions such as modifying the 
> firewall setups.  Don't bother with it for Samba unless you are only 
> doing a very basic setup.

SWAT is far better for samba, and comes with it.  And Webmin is not
something I'd put on any system I cared about.

> -- If your setup is this complex then spend the money on decent backup 
> software.  BackupEdge is easy to use and has so many different features 
> and options its worth the money.  Yes, you can do wonderful things with 
> basic Linux functions, but you'll spend quite a bit of time figuring 
> them out and setting them up.  (I read up on them, but I didn't bother 
> putting the time in.)

afio, cpio, and tar are not complex.  Well, afio is kinda.  I believe the
BUGS section in the man page says, "Too many command line options."  Still,
it's more fault tolerant than cpio, and at its basic level, is just as easy
to use--same syntax, as it's a drop-in replacement.

> -- Learn the command line interface.  It's not the the GUI doesn't have 
> tools that help, it's that they are so limited that they hide access to 
> the functionality and features you probably need to modify for such a 
> more complex environment.

Depends on your system.  SuSE's is -not- limited.  Actually, their samba
config tool is quite robust compared to most.  It's no substitute for
knowing smb.conf and knowing what you're doing (you should see the values
someone put into it once!), but it's not bad.  SWAT is still more
comprehensive (very comprehensive), and is GUI.

But yes, learning to work with the command line is part of learning to be a
real admin.

> -- If you want to set up printing and automatic driver downloading 
> through the Samba server then read this:
> http://www.linuxprinting.org/kpfeifle/SambaPrintHOWTO/Samba-HOWTO-Collection-3.0-PrintingChapter-11th-draft.html#9_1
> Especially the tagged location for the "Point'nPrint".  Just 
> understanding the need to "tickle" the driver setup will help you from 
> wasting a lot of time trying to figure out why some drivers won't 
> print.  (This isn't pointed out in all the documentation on the subject.)
> -- Oplock setup for Samba use with FilePro (on the share level of the 
> configuration file)
>         level2 oplocks = no
>         oplocks = no

Yeah. See, that all falls under, "Learn it, or pay me to do it for you,"
given my line of work.

What you confused with hostility was my sincerity in basically saying, "You
can do it one of two ways--pay someone to do it, or sink in the time
yourself.  Just don't expect it to come totally free so you can do this in
a hurry and have a production system in no time flat."

You learned it yourself.  I respect that, and I have no problems with that.

It's certain people that have perpetually leeched knowledge for years and
never paid a cent that have ruined it for everyone.  I'm usually pretty
generous about helping people to a point for free, but some people aren't
just on the cuff, they're 4/5 the way up my sleeve (and our collective
sleeves) after years, and the last person that pulled that pretty much shot
a lot of my personal goodwill towards everyone when I got around to feeling
burned.

There's no such thing as free -support-.  If you (the generic, not
specific) want -advice-, fine.  But there's no mandate to what is or
isn't given freely.  If you want -solutions-, have your wallet open or be
prepared to learn it yourself.  The latter takes time, so don't expect an
accelerated implementation curve.  But there's a difference between advice
and support.  I personally thought you were crossing the line.  That's
entirely subjective, admittedly.

You -seemed- to be wanting the accelerated curve for free when you
solicited advice in the aforementioned incident.  And I took exception to
that.

That's all I was ever saying.  I just tend not to pussyfoot around with
a bunch of touchy-feely stuff when I discuss issues.  I'm nothing if not
blunt.

mark->
-- 
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