Using Samba 48
| Using Samba | |
| author | Kelly, Peter / Collier-Brown, David / Eckstein, Robert |
| pages | 416 |
| publisher | O'Reilly & Associates, 11/1999 |
| rating | 8/10 |
| reviewer | chromatic |
| ISBN | 1565924495 |
| summary | Using Samba takes you from heterogenous network purgatory into manageable bliss by helping you install, configure, and maintain Samba installations. |
Overview
Samba is a suite of software tools implementing the SMB protocol. With Samba, you can share files and printers from a Unix-based server to Windows-based clients. You can even control a Windows NT based domain with a Unix server, potentially saving thousands of dollars in software licensing fees and administration costs.
Using Samba takes you from your initial need for Samba in a heterogenous network to installation, through configuration, and ending up with performance tweaking. Most of the focus is on the server side, but there's information about the SMB protocol itself and client setup.
Note: This review is based upon a draft copy of the book. The final copy has been reorganized and some parts have been rewritten. Most of the information still applies.
What's Good?
As is Samba, Using Samba is Unix-variant agnostic, with installation tips for multiple OS's. This covers download sites, compilation, and even SWAT, the web-based configuration interface in Samba 2.0.x. The authors have a clear, clean style (as you'd expect from O'Reilly) and take a common-sense, practical approach to various issues such as security and configuration. The authors also focus on additional Samba utilties like smbclient and smbmount, which are useful for troubleshooting.
The chapter on tweaking for performance is excellent. More books deserve chapters like this. The authors go through the various bottlenecks and demonstrate how modifying one parameter affects the others. (I suspect the general principles are applicable elsewhere.)
The real gem of this book is chapter nine, the troubleshooting tree. If you're stuck with weird behavior and you have a deadline to meet, this chapter alone may be well worth the cover price. It starts by discussing Samba logs, moves into trace and tcpdump, spends pages and pages on an extremely detailed Fault Tree, and ends up with pointers to other resources.
What's not so good?
(These are really minor points. My recommendation is that if you're looking at Samba, you should read the sample chapter and then buy this book.)
The chapter on configuring Windows clients seemed a little out of place, given that this book promotes Samba as a replacement or alternative to a Windows server. That's pretty straightforward, and probably not why you'd buy a book about Samba. The NT Domain model discusison is valuable, though, given that a Samba server may have to act as a Domain Controller or a Master Browser, and that can have big implications.
Using Samba covers both versions 1.9.x and 2.0.x. It would have made more sense to me to stick with the latest stable version and cover it in detail. However, most of the options are the same between the two, and the differences are clearly marked. There are only a handful of places where this comes up. As I said, it's only a minor issue.
The Bottom Line
If you know you need Samba and want some help setting it up and configuring it, this is your book. If you're curious about what Samba can do for your network, flip through the first chapter and rest assured that this book will help you get things under control.
Purchase this book at fatbrain
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Learning the Samba
What is Samba?
What Can Samba Do For Me?
Getting Familiar with a SMB/CIFS Network
Microsoft Implementations
An Overview of the Samba Distribution
How Can I Get Samba?
What's New in Samba 2.0?
And That's Not All...
2. Installing Samba on a Unix System
Downloading the Samba Distribution
Configuring Samba
Compiling and Installing Samba
A Basic Samba Configuration File
Starting the Samba Daemons
Testing the Samba Daemons
3. Configuring Windows Clients
Setting Up Windows 95/98 Computers
Setting Up Windows NT 4.0 Computers
An Introduction to SMB/CIFS
4. Disk Shares
Learning the Samba Configuration File
Special Sections
Configuration File Options
Server Configuration
Disk Share Configuration
Networking Options with Samba
Virtual Servers
Logging Configuration Options
5. Browsing and Advanced Disk Shares
Browsing
Filesystem Differences
File Permissions and Attributes on MS-DOS and Unix
Name Mangling and Case
Locks and Oplocks
6. Users, Security, and Domains
Users and Groups
Controlling Access to Shares
Authentication Security
Passwords
Windows Domains
Logon Scripts
7. Printing and Name Resolution
Sending Print Jobs to Samba
Printing to Windows Client Printers
Name Resolution with Samba
8. Additional Samba Information
Supporting Programmers
Magic Scripts
Internationalization
WinPopup Messages
Recently Added Options
Miscellaneous Options
Backups with smbtar
9. Troubleshooting Samba
The Tool Bag
The Fault Tree
Extra Resources
A. Configuring Samba with SSL
B. Samba Performance Tuning
C. Samba Configuration Option Quick Reference
D. Summary of Samba Daemons and Commands
E. Downloading Samba with CVS
F. Sample Configuration File
Questions and comments (Score:2)
Does the book cover 2.0.6? This is somewhat important, because smbmount has been changed to work with mount, and I'm still figuring out the best way to utilize this.
Secondly, I've heard that this book will be available online, in addition to dead tree format, for those who are cheap, or want to explore new economic models for content.
Of course it discusses Windows client configs! (Score:5)
"The chapter on configuring Windows clients seemed a little out of place, given that this book promotes Samba as a replacement or alternative to a Windows server. That's pretty straightforward, and probably not why you'd buy a book about Samba."
I hope that I'm just reading this passage incorrectly, but as written, it makes no sense to me at all. Information on how to configure Windows clients is exactly why I'd consider purchasing a book on Samba. Samba is intended as a "a replacement or alternative to a Windows server", so of course there will be Windows clients connecting to it. Also, it is very likely that a Samba server will be dropped into a MS (NT, Win95, whatever) network environment, and will have to "play nice" with the exsisting network machines. Therefore, it is highly appropriate to have a section devoted to the configuration of Windows clients in the book. As someone who has not regularly used a MS-Windows OS in many years, I would surely appreciate having the reference on Windows clients to fall back on.
I'll Buy It (Score:2)
I'm approaching this from a Samba newbie standpoint so all the information was interesting and helpful. Experienced users might not find it so. But, I believe a program that is always evolving as Samba does and adding new configurations parameters will have few masters who don't use a reference book. I might not always have an answer, but I almost always know where to get one.
I almost wouldn't mind seeing a book about how to replace your NT server with Linux. Meaning, if I have an NT server running file serving, print serving, fax serving, and Exchange e-mail, what do I need to get on a Linux box to replace it wholesale so my users have no idea what just happened? Especially if I have Mac as well as Windows clients. I guess I'm talking about a small business server guide to using Linux instead of NT.
I do hope they keep this book up to date at the Samba site. With the constant changes some of this information gets old quickly.
Looking At It In Different Ways (Score:2)
I didn't think about it that way... My line of reasoning was that Samba allows you to replace a Windows server with a Unix box in an existing network.
If you have an existing network set up, your Windows clients are probably already configured. The assumption there is that anyone setting up Samba has already configured the clients for one server or another, and the configuration method is the same no matter what type of server they use. Of course, you can also set up a network from scratch, with absolutely no Windows servers, which renders that assumption invalid.
Thanks for the comment. Now I understand why that chapter was there!
--
QDMerge [rmci.net] 0.4!
Re:Questions and comments (Score:1)
on the front page, mentions
"O'Reilly have released their new book Using Samba under an open content license! The book has been adopted by the Samba Team as the "official" Samba book and we will strive to keep it up to date. O'Reilly have sent us the full sources for the book and we will be making it available online as soon as we can, we just need to work out some formatting and conversion issues. We also plan to make it directly accessible from SWAT. "
and yes, I'm cheap, and still learning about Samba, so.....WOoHOo!
Good licence (Score:3)
The licence is kind of interesting.
Read the whole story at http://www.oreilly.co m/catalog/samba/chapter/licenseinfo.html [oreilly.com].
Re:Looking At It In Different Ways (Score:1)
~GoRK
Re:I'll Buy It (Score:1)
Are you listening, O'Reilly ? :-)
--
Why couldn't this have come out a few months ago? (Score:2)
Joe
"Just remember,
Things could always be worse..
You could be veal."
Can anyone provide a link to the full text? (Score:1)
So anybody know where?
it will not cover 2.0.6 (especially smbmount) (Score:1)
Maybe it has been updated to cover newer levels since then so as to avoid duplicating the 'Samba in 24 hours' information, but 2.0.6 is less that a week old so no chance there.
If in doubt, see how smbmount is documented - that is the item where the user interface has undergone major changes recently.
Re:it will not cover 2.0.6 (especially smbmount) (Score:1)
That's too bad. But, I imagine the non-dead-trees version will be updated at some point in the near future (after it gets online, anyway) to include this information.
I'm not the target audience, but ... (Score:2)
Ahead of the curve
Cool!
timothy
Re:Looking At It In Different Ways (Score:1)
Of course, this may be fixed now...new samba out last week, and I haven't had the oppertunity to use it yet...
Not yet available (Score:3)
The book has been adopted by the Samba Team as the "official" Samba book and we will strive to keep it up to date. O'Reilly have sent us the full sources for the book and we will be making it available online as soon as we can, we just need to work out some formatting and conversion issues. We also plan to make it directly accessible from SWAT. A huge thanks to O'Reilly for this great step forward in the documentation of Samba!
Re:Why can't samba provide user list for Win9x? (Score:3)
Re:I'll Buy It (Score:1)
This is precisely what I'm trying to do right now. File and print serving doesn't represent a problem. Samba does this fine.
I'm stuck on faxing and Exchange replacement tough. Dos anybody know of a good network faxing solution for Linux?
Replacing Exchange alltogether is going to be hard tough. I don't even know if there is a MAPI system available for Unices at all. And Exchange does alot of other things (Calendaring, for example).. Is there an alternative way of doing this?
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Samba Passwords vs. System Passwords (Score:1)
We are trying to implement a single-login -- ie, NIS + NFS + etc -- procedure here in the lab and to add this facility to the windows users, what would be really apreciatted by those ( users would be able to mount their home dir everywhere, even in the windows boxes, avoding lost of data in the computers jungle and would need to remember one single password only ) and by the adm. ( that would have fewer places to take care of... )
Samba would be the perfect tool to this particular problem IFF it could use the system's password authentication scheme ( in our case, the NIS passwd DB ) instead of its own. I thought that there was an smb.conf option that would make it use the sys's passwd but it seems that there ins't such option!
Now, would any of the fine slashdotters help me out with this problem?
--- "I may be drunk, but in the morning I will be sober, while you will still be stupid and ugly." -Winston Churchill
Re:It IS available (Score:1)
almost snarfed up a hairball when i found out it finally came in. it really is quite pathetic how excited i get over o'reilly books. they're like a non-liquid form of heroin. really.
btw- the samba team is woking on making the book available via SWAT....swank....
Re:Samba Passwords vs. System Passwords (Score:1)
This probably won't help much but... Samba doesn't use a separate user/pwd Database. It uses the underlying unix for authentification. You can assign several "virtual" samba-users to one real unix user account tough (trough smbusers file).
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Re:I'll Buy It (Score:1)
http://www.ice.hp.com/cyc/om/00/index.html
Linux Replacement for Exchange Server (Score:1)
Configuration is a bit tricky though.
I would recommend this setup for no more than 5 computers, but maybe with tweaking it could be set up and stable on more systems.
The way I did it involves using a feature of Outlook 98/2000, namely Web Folders, in conjunction with Microsoft Mail (Although it could be made to run over any email service.)
What I found is that by using Web Folders you can send updates to calendars, tasks, contacts, etc. through email messages, which are intercepted and executed by Outlook in the background (the user never "sees" these emails, they are deleted by Outlook after being processed.)
Exchange is extremely expensive as a standalone product. I am working rapidly to move to Linux based servers, as I do network installs for small legal firms (1-2 partners and 2-3 assistants/paralegals.) They simply can't keep up with the licensing.
Exchange has been the biggest barrier to complete Linux migration thus far, but I've been somewhat successful with this implementation. See the article on my website here.
http://www.dragonflydynamix.com/jvlmnlaw.htm
Re:Samba Passwords vs. System Passwords (Score:1)
Re:Samba Passwords vs. System Passwords (Score:1)
Re:Can anyone provide a link to the full text? (Score:1)
Re:I'll Buy It (Score:1)
messagedirect.com sells an IMAP client for Windoze that has MAPI support.
Haven't seen any good calendaring stuff yet.
Re:I'll Buy It (Score:1)
Re:Samba Passwords vs. System Passwords (Score:1)
--
Echange Replacement. (Score:1)
Re:Looking At It In Different Ways (Score:2)
The speed of the server hasn't been a problem for us, but we're only using 1 100Mbit ethernet card in it.
I think some of the limitations you may be experiencing may be due to Linux and the fact that it doesn't multithread network cards yet.
Running Samba under Solaris or an operating system that can support much bigger machines than Intel does can give you even more scalability with more clients than Windows NT servers can. You also get great reliability. I haven't had any problems with the setup we have here as far as reliability or compatibility.
Re:Not yet available (Score:2)
Very nice indeed. All of the Samba books that I've seen are pretty good, but this one has it all.
does it cover smbmount at all? (Score:2)
The new smbmount is really easy to use, I have not tried it with fstab yet. Once I do, it will go up in my home-page which covers this sort of stuff.
Re:does it cover smbmount at all? (Score:2)
Nope, although we do mention it. Smbmount was suffering from a lack of maintainers during almost the whole period that the book was being written. I'm glad to see support for it coming back.
Also, smbmount is Linux-specific. So Andrew wrote smbsh, the samba shell. It's an OS-agnostic alternative.
--dave
Re:Looking At It In Different Ways (Score:1)
Typical reader's thoughts: "I have a couple Windows boxes, and I hear that if I buy some network cards and a copy of Linux, I can use something called Samba as a server?"
Re:I'll Buy It (Score:1)
Ahem. Use our product free, or use it in its commercial product incarnation. Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX (yes, really).
richi.
--
Richi Jennings
http://www.hp.com/go/openmail
Hewlett-Packard Company
"Practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty"
Robert Eckstein: Some Answers (Score:1)
OPEN-CONTENT LICENSE:
Some info about the open-content license:
1) About two months ago, Andrew Tridgell and Andy Oram (the editor) and myself agreed to publish this book under an open-content license. This was primarily at the behest of Andrew Tridgell--so be sure to send him and Jeremy Allison many pizzas as thanks.
2) The book went to print about a month ago. We tried to get as quick a turnaround time as possible, since this book has been delayed a couple of times already. Why was it delayed, you ask? Let's just say that Andrew Tridgell is a very thorough reviewer.
3) After the final edits went through, we sent the source in SGML format to the good people at samba.org. That was a couple of weeks ago. They are currently formatting it for online use, and they will also be maintaining it. When it becomes available, you can download it from samba.org.
DOES THE BOOK COVER 2.0.6?
No, it does not. At the time it went to print, 2.0.5 was the latest Samba release in existence.
WINDOWS CLIENT CONFIG CHAPTER
The reply is correct. You want to be able to configure Windows 95/98/NT Workstation to use with Samba because it masquerades as an NT server. However, because Samba and NT don't like to coexist, there are issues. (And, don't forget the dreaded encrypted password problem that all first-time Samba admins face). Topics like that are what this chapter tries to address... from the client side.
RE: I'LL BUY IT
Hey, if you want to write a book on doing exactly that, send a proposal to proposals@ora.com.
RE: GOOD LICENSE
You can thank Andy Oram at O'Reilly for that license. This is likely a harbinger for future O'Reilly books.
RE: PROVIDE USER LIST FOR WIN 9x
Samba 2.1 may provide some relief to your grief, although I do not know the exact mechanics yet. You can use Samba 2.1 beta right now for NT authentication, however. The "Users and Passwords" chapter explains how to do this.
RE: WHOLE NEW BOOK NEEDED
Yeah, I would think so. Samba is getting pretty big, and if you saw the size of SMB/CIFS (and know that there is no complete implementation in existence, according to Andrew Tridgell), you'd be aghast. I was.
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
- Robert Eckstein (O'Reilly and Associates)