Using Samba - Softcover

Ts, Jay; Eckstein, Robert; Collier-Brown, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0596002564 ISBN 13: 9780596002565

Publisher: O'Reilly Media, 2003

Synopsis

This book, which has been officially adopted by the Samba Team and is under the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), is a comprehensive guide to Samba administration. The 2nd edition focuses on Samba 2.2 and covers the most important features of 3.0, which was under development as this book went to print.Samba is a cross-platform triumph: it turns a Unix or Linux system into a file and print server for Microsoft Windows network clients. Samba is so robust, flexible, fast, and secure that many people are choosing it over Windows NT/2000/XP for their file and print services. Samba is also free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License.This book will help you make file and print sharing as robust, powerful, and efficient as possible. The authors delve into the internals of the Windows activities and protocols to an unprecedented degree, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each feature in Windows domains and in Samba itself.Using Samba takes you from basic installation and configuration--on both the client and server side, for a wide range of systems--to subtle details of security, cross-platform compatibility, and resource discovery that make the difference between whether a user sees the folder they expect or a cryptic error message.The range of this book knows few bounds. Wondering how to integrate Samba's authentication with that of a Windows PDC? How to get Samba to serve Microsoft Dfs shares? How to share files on Mac OS X? These and a dozen other issues of interest to system administrators are covered. A whole chapter is dedicated to troubleshooting.Whether you're playing on one note or a full three-octave range, on your personal computer or an enterprise network, Using Samba will give you an efficient and secure server.

About this title

Review

Samba, the Server Message Block (SMB) server software that makes it relatively easy to integrate Unix or Linux servers into networks of Microsoft Windows workstations, has to date been mostly explained as an afterthought. Most often, it's appeared in the latter chapters of books about Linux. It deserves better, and the authors of Using Samba have delivered exactly that.

This book documents Samba 2.0.4 fully (version 2.0.5, source and binary, appears on the companion CD-ROM), focusing on smbd, nmbd, the command-line tools, and Samba's newfound ability to integrate itself securely with Windows NT domains.

Though it includes a bit of information on the SMB and Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocols that underlie Samba, the emphasis here is on setting up and configuring software. Explicit sections explain how to install Samba on a Unix/Linux system and how to set up Microsoft clients to communicate with the Samba machine. The authors pay lavish attention to the Samba configuration file, smb.conf, and explain exactly what settings you need to include in it to allow disk shares, network browsing, and integration with Windows domains. A highly useful reference that lists all Samba configuration options (along with their valid values, default values, and explanations) appears in an appendix. --David Wall

Topics covered: All aspects of setting up and configuring Samba 2.0 and its variants, including client configuration, file sharing, network browsing, file system differences between Windows and Unix/Linux, security, and the contents of the Samba configuration file.

About the Author

Jay Ts is a system administrator and programmer with many years of experience working with several versions of Unix and other operating systems. Nowadays he works as an independent consultant out of his home in Sedona, Arizona. When he is not busy reading the Samba mailing lists and learning about new computer technology, Jay might be analyzing stock market behavior, meditating, playing around in his recording studio, or hiking in the wilderness near his home.

Robert Eckstein worked as an editor at O'Reilly mostly on Java books (notably Java Swing) and was also responsible for the XML Pocket Reference and Webmaster in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition. In his spare time he has been known to provide online coverage for popular conferences. Robert holds bachelor's degrees in computer science and communications from Trinity University. In the past, he has worked for the USAA insurance company and more recently spent four years with Motorola's cellular software division. He is the co-author of Using Samba.

David Collier-Brown is a consulting systems integrator, currently working for the performance and engineering group at Sun Opcom in Toronto. He is also co-author of the first edition of Using Samba. In his spare time he reads assiduously, keeps score for his wife's baseball team and, in the two weeks of the local summer, sails from Toronto's outer harbor.

Edition details

• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0596002564
• ISBN 13: 9780596002565
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 560