Re: [SLUG] RE: OT: M$ deals the final blow - effects of sp2?

From: Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com)
Date: Sat Sep 11 2004 - 12:57:16 EDT


Patrick Grantham wrote:
> In short, will xp Sp2 foul up an xp machine talking to red hat samba server?
> If so what are the work arounds?

The answer to both questions depends on a number of things. The fact
that it's RH shouldn't affect connectivity with Windows machines,
running SP2 or otherwise, unless your particular iteration of RH
(whether RHL, RHEL, or Fedora) has Samba-related problems of its own or
uses the wrong version of Samba to be able to connect to a given version
Windows OS version.

Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't talking much about specifically what new
"security features" they've included, but most of them seem to be very
heavy-handed. Two very broad categories of alteration that are included
with SP2 that they've mentioned explicitly involve "enhancements" to
both personal (software) firewall and antivirus protections. I know
from personal experience, involving recovering a hosed-up system at a
client's office, that SP2 is also quite draconian in its enforcement of
driver certification.

To be specific: A client has a computer running Windows XP
Professional. It uses a Serial ATA hard drive as its only internal
storage media. There is no SATA controller on the motherboard, so an
expansion card controller is installed in a PCI slot. Drivers for the
card are necessary to make WinXP recognize the SATA controller and,
thus, the drive. The drivers provided by the vendor are not SP2
certified. Upon installation of SP2 by the client (against the advice
of my employer), Windows XP identified the driver for the SATA
controller as being uncertified, and uninstalled it. When the computer
was next rebooted, it no longer worked because in the beginnings of the
boot process it decided it couldn't read the hard drive and, thus, there
must not be a hard drive.

There are other problems with SP2 that might arise, including
intentional breakage of some older versions of Samba connectivity, but I
have yet to see SP2 break Samba connectivity in any clients' offices
where a Linux server resides on the network. I suspect you're okay in
that regard. I'd still recommend avoiding it like the plague, though.
Breaking down the network could easily be the LEAST of your problems.

As I think I've mentioned, I'm ensuring that I use no MS OSes from here
on out that are newer than Win2k SP2.
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