Samba 2.2.0 Released

Jeremy Allison wrote in to tell us that Samba 2.2.0 has been released. Of course, I'm sure everyone reading this knows what that means already, so I've attached the press release. Mostly this looks like its stuff for compatibility with Windows "We just changed enough to break everyone else" 2000's implementation of the protocol. Congrats to everyone involved with what is unquesitonably among the most important server apps on Linux.

Samba 2.2.0 - Powering the next generation of Network Attached Storage.

17 April 2001.

The Samba Team is proud to announce a new major release of Samba, version 2.2.0. This release includes significant feature enhancements for Samba, and sets the standard for UNIX® and Microsoft Windows® integration.

Enhancements include :

oIntegration of server terminated leases (Windows "oplocks") with UNIX NFS sharing (Linux 2.4 kernel and IRIX only). Complete data and locking integrity when sharing files between UNIX and Windows.

oAbility to act as an authentication source for Windows 2000® and Windows NT® clients, allowing savings on the purchase of Microsoft® Client Access Licenses.

oFull support for the automatic downloading of Windows 2000 and Windows NT printer drivers, providing the first full implementation of the Windows NT point-and-print functionality independent of Microsoft code.

oUnification of Windows 2000 and Windows NT Access control lists (ACLs) with UNIX Access control lists. Allow Windows clients to directly manipulate UNIX Access control entries as though they were Windows ACLs.

oSingle sign-on integration using the winbind server (available separately). Allow UNIX servers to use Windows 2000 and Windows NT Domain controllers as a user and group account server. Manage all user and group accounts from a single source.

oMicrosoft Distributed File System® (DFS) support. Samba 2.2.0 can act as a DFS server in a Microsoft network.

oShare level security setting. Allow security on Samba shares to be set by Microsoft client tools.

oMany other feature enhancements and bug fixes.

About Samba

Samba is an Open Source/Free Software implementation of the Microsoft CIFS/SMB protocols for UNIX systems. In development for ten years, Samba is considered to be the reference implementation of the CIFS/SMB protocol for UNIX systems. Samba test tools are used by all the CIFS/SMB vendors to test and fix their protocol implementations.

Samba is currently used in Network attached storage (NAS) and other products from the following vendors (Note: this does not imply endorsement by these vendors, please contact the vendor marketing departments separately for comments).

IBM®, SGI® (Samba for IRIX), Sun Microsystems ®(Cobalt Qube), Hewlett Packard® (CIFS/9000), VERITAS®, VA Linux Systems®, REALM Information Technologies ®, Network Concierge®, Procom ® and many others.

In addition, Samba is shipped as a standard part of Linux® offerings from Linux vendors such as Red Hat®, Caldera®, SuSE®, Mandrake®, TurboLinux ® and others.

Samba is being used worldwide to solve the problem of integrating hetrogeneous networks by corporations such as Agilent Technologies ®, CISCO Systems ®, and many others in addition to educational establishments and individuals

Best of all Samba is an Open Source/Free software project, available under the GNU GPL license meaning that source code for Samba is freely available for anyone to modify and customize.

Code from the Samba Team and individuals around the world has been integrated and tested to create Samba. In addition the following corporations have made significant donations of code, effort, testing facilities and support to make this release possible :

Linuxcare (now TurboLinux), VA Linux Systems, Caldera, SGI, Hewlett Packard, VERITAS, IBM.

This new release may be downloaded from our Web site at :

http://www.samba.org

For press enquiries about this release please contact either Jeremy Allison (jra@samba.org), Andrew Tridgell (tridge@samba.org) or John Terpstra (jht@samba.org).

Samba - the SOURCE for Windows Networking !

Comments

Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Samba may be free, the skill and effort required to install and configure it is not. You have to consider the cost of employing someone with the required skills to do this versus the cost of a Windows license and a windows installation. Windows supports unattended installations which can be initiated with little or no effort, provided the configuration settings are correctly specified.

Re:Cost

[jnik]

An interesting (and important) point, but ultimately a little off. Most linux distros also support unattended installation, but how many file servers do you really need? SAMBA being a primarily server-side app, it doesn't make much sense to do automated installs.
On top of that, administering a Windows network takes time, skill, and education, just as much as a UNIX network. MS talks about lower TCO if you just buy Windows, but that hasn't been borne out at my job.

Re:Cost

[Malor]

well yes, but the admin is $90K PER YEAR -- in theory, at least for now, the $40K is a once-off expense. And from a business perspective, spending $40K to save $40K/year makes excellent sense.

Flip side of the coin is that the $90K guy is probably going to be able to do a hell of a lot more than just basic administration. Whether or not this is worth it to a given company will mostly depend on whether they see IT as a strategic asset or as a cost center.

Re:Cost

[Malor]

heh, I'm kind of arguing out of both sides of my mouth here.

My general experience with M$ versus Unix is that it takes four times as long to solve something in Unix, but once it's solved it's done and you never have to touch it again. With M$, you generally pay a lot more up front in licensing (compared to the free Unices), and you also pay a lot more in ongoing maintenance as stuff mysteriously breaks. If you need the services up instantly, use Windows. If you have some time to twiddle and a talented person to do the twiddling, Unix may be a better bet.

For the dotcoms, that were all about flash and sizzle, Windows made a lot of sense. For the companies who are in it for the long haul, I tend to think that Unix is a better solution a lot of the time. Probably the single most important factor is the overall skill level of the IT staff, with the caveat that if you don't push them a little they're not improving as fast as they might be. (note I said a LITTLE. :-) )

As an aside, W2K does seems substantially better than NT, but still not as good as Unix.

Re:Cost

[kraig]

as edinho said, it isn't really a one-off cost. It's a one-off cost every several years. While businesses who're able to pay admins $90k, or pay $40k for licenses, tend to be a bit more conservative with adopting new technology (our own IT department is still looking at Win2k, for example), eventually they do adopt the new stuff (mainly because MS gives them no choice - support for older platforms is dropped).

And yeah, most $90k admins are generally able to do more than just admin - they typically have programming skills as well. (However, you don't want to hand over an integral part of your programming effort to an admin who may be called away at a moment's notice to deal with a haxx0r attack.)

Re:Cost

[kraig]

ditto.

YES, it takes more time (generally) to set up something under *nix than it does similar Windows services. However, would you rather put your budget into hiring a $90k admin who knows what s/he's doing, or into hiring a $50k admin who may or may not + $40k for licenses?

Re:Cost

[eswan]

Interesting my ass.

> Although Samba may be free, the skill and effort required to install and configure it is not.
Bah.

cd /usr/src
curl http://us1.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba-latest.tar.gz > ./samba-latest.tar.gz
tar -xvzf ./samba-latest.tgz
cd samba-2.2.0/source
./configure
make install
/usr/local/samba/bin/swat &
and voila! nice preety gui for dem winders foks

As for the ease of configuring Windows, sure, it's real easy to set up. Badly. Tell me, are these inexpensive employees who can't install Samba going to be able to tell you if you're exposing the IPC$ share to the world? If you're allowing case-insensitive LANMAN passwords? Sounds like the guys running Microsoft's routers.
Not even going to comment on the 'supports unattended installations...provided the configuration settings are correctly specified.'

Re:Cost

[mpe]

You have to consider the cost of employing someone with the required skills to do this versus the cost of a Windows license and a windows installation.

You still need a skilled person to install Windows. Especially given the kind of documentation MS puts out.

Windows supports unattended installations which can be initiated with little or no effort, provided the configuration settings are correctly specified.

However it can take a lot of effort to get these configurations right in the first place. As well as messy mistakes to clean up if they are wrong.
Also how do you get any version of NT to automatically create user shares. Do you know that NT automatically shares it's whole filesystem, by default too. In most cases you don't want this.

Re:Cost

[L0rdJedi]

So you consider installing something like Client Services for Netware a rare occasion? Reboots should be used only for hardware and kernel upgrades/patches.

Re:Cost

[OmegaDan]

I find that when setting up sometning under unix, you can expect it to be working for a LONG time afterwords as well ... just recently at my place of employment I had to upgrade sendmail due to an ORBS warning, (which meant reconfiguring), and while it was a pain in the butt, one couldn't help but admire that the sendmail hadn't been touched since 1997 :)

Re:Cost

[pi_rules]

Windows supports unattended installations...

I'm pretty sure that the install of NT we were trying around here today was attended by demonic spirits. If the monitor started spewing forth pea-soup like liquids at me it wouldn't have surprised me at all.

Justin Buist

Re:Cost

[edinho]

$40k per version of windows server version:

Win2K 2000

WinXP 2002

WinWinWin 2004

WinWinWinAgain 2006

Hmmm... Do you have to pay for chainging the clients as well? Win98, WinMe, WinYou, WinWhat...

Also, wait till .NET comes out, then you'll get to pay $0.01 per page printed to a Win.NET server. Try the new login screen:

User Name:

Password:

Log on to:

Credit Card #:

8^)

e.

Re:Cost

[Ktistec Machine]

...the skill and effort required to install and configure it is not.
The same is true for Windows, which isn't free. Also, our university is currently thinking about deploying a central PDC to authenticate everyone on campus. This would require the purchase of 20,000 MS client licenses at $5.00 each. You do a lot of installing and configuring (not to mention training) for $100,000.00

Re:Cost

[raju1kabir]

Although Samba may be free, the skill and effort required to install and configure it is not. You have to consider the cost of employing someone with the required skills to do this versus the cost of a Windows license and a windows installation

Installing Samba is a one-time cost. The FreeBSD machines we have running Samba 2.0.7 and qmail 1.0.3 have - to my knowledge, which should be pretty good on this - never been touched since installation over a year ago.

It took a couple hours to get each one up and running. Log summaries get mailed to the admin group nightly. The machines run and run and run (VALinux; Slashdot oughtta be happy). Zero downtime, zero admin time. In that period there have been no relevant security updates and no other reasons to even remember the machines exist (aside from the pleasant comfort of seeing their activity lights blinking around the clock).

Now THAT's low TCO. Anyone can afford to have a unix geek come in for a few hours. With MS machines performing similar functions, responsible sysadminning would have required dozens (or more) of hours of work.

Re:Cost

[kcelery]

Even if you are a hard core MS supporter you should install a SAMBA to bridge the Unix and MS world. You'll see how well the other world is progressing. In a long run, it give pressure on MS to provide better software.

Re:Cost

[Guppy06]

"the skill and effort required to install and configure it is not."

... but still less than the corresponding costs of a Win 2k Server liscence (any flavor) and all the corresponding CALs. The larger your organization, the more CALs you'll need to buy to support Win 2k Server, and the more tempting it will be to use Samba instead.

Besides, installation of components in Linux is simpler than Windows (no rebooting), and the know-how needed to properly configure it will take an hour, maybe two to glean from the HOWTOs.

"You have to consider the cost of employing someone with the required skills"

... or you can be smart enough to hire someone who can learn the skills

Besides, the box of a Win 2k implementation might as well say "MCSE Not Included" right on it. At least with Linux you won't have to spend $1000's for the software on top of IT salaries

"Windows supports unattended installations"

... as do several Linux distros...

"provided the configuration settings are correctly specified."

Like I said, "MCSE Not Included."

Re:new section

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and for once with colors that don't make you feel like puking.

Gosh, isn't it a UNIX app?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats to everyone involved with what is
unquesitonably among the most important server apps on Linux.

And here all this time I thought it was an important UNIX application. Oh, look. So do the authors of SAMBA.

I'm sure your corporate masters at the Open Source Developers Network love your attention to the ideals of pimping GNU/Linux.

Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mostly this looks like its stuff for compatibility with Windows."

Umm...no shit. Isn't that the purpose of Samba?

Re:Unix vs. the Stupid

[cduffy]

I'm a bit less sure than that. PostgreSQL is very good, but it's not exactly in class with Oracle (at least, 7.0 wasn't -- I just installed 7.1 today, so I really can't comment on the changes). Anyhow, even presuming that it is ready for the title, PostgreSQL only became enterprise-ready much more recently than either Apache or Samba.

Re:"authentication source"?

[cduffy]

I'm really not sure of that. Everywhere I've deployed samba (mostly schools but a business or two as well), they cared about licenses quite a bit.

Re:unattended setup of windows clients.

[imroy]

The theory is you boot one of these computers, during the boot up you press F8, you are prompted for a user name & password, then the an OS image is TFTPed to the local machine.

Gee, that sounds alot like my experience installing Debian GNU/Linux on a 9 year-old Sun Sparcstation LX. I just had to setup bootp and tftp, download the tftp image and a couple others from the debian site. It started up, got its ip address, sucked down the boot image and booted it. Then it kept me up till after 5am in the morning while it downloaded packages through the masqueraded internet connection. It took me a couple of times to get the TFTP image to load (wrong name), but everything else went very smoothly.

Oh how I now wish that PCs had something like the OpenBoot Prompt. The BIOS's in current PCs are downright primitive. Very little has changed in the last 15-odd years. It's pathetic.

I wonder how long until M$ trumpets this as their next great "innovation"...

Re:Unix vs. the Stupid

[On Lawn]

add, Enhydra also.


~^~~^~^^~~^

Re:Flamebait

[On Lawn]

onlawn:"Here, you can have mine..."
phutureboy:"But that [karma] took 81 years to earn!"
onlawn:"That's okay, I don't need it much any more"

(disclaimer, I have it wrong so anyone who can give a better trascript feel free to do so...)



~^~~^~^^~~^

Flamebait

[On Lawn]

one man's flame is another man's fire...

His comments would have been more tempered if he said "environment they are used to" instead of "more stable, [yada]".

But that wouldn't be saying anything different.

/me ducks

Seriously though, having moved from a Linux environment to a Windows recently, I can attest that Windows is more stable these days than it was. But check this out, I just had to visit a company yesterday that I installed a samba server in over a year and a half ago.

I had never had to visit them since the time I installed it, until now that they are having hardware problems with the case its housed in. They aren't Linux gurus so I can attest that they haven't touched it.

I wonder if anyone can say they have a NT box in a production commercial environment that they haven't had to touch in 18 months, nay not even a reboot.

On my linux box at home, if my wife does something strange, like run tuxracer even though we don't have 3d acceloration, I can log in from work and fix it for her, while she is logged in and without stepping on what she is doing.

I know there is remote admin tools for NT and 2000, but honestly, they aren't as powerful and/or they interupt what the user is doing.

So, I hope this is more insiteful and evenhanded, but I don't need any more karma.


~^~~^~^^~~^

Re:Flamebait

[phutureboy]

So, I hope this is more insiteful and evenhanded, but I don't need any more karma.

Can I have your karma?

--

Solaris - nice clean build!

[mholve]

I compiled it last night on Solaris 7, and it was a nice, clean build. Good work, guys!

Re:"authentication source"?

[Sabalon]

Have you ever seen an M$ PDC replicate?

All I know is when my former boss decided that NT was the way to go, one day we had just one NT machine and next week there were about 8 of them.

Something was replicating!!! :)

We will know this is hurting MS when

[djKing]

they will change the License for W2K cals.

They did the same thing when puting fast track or web site pro web server on NT Workstation was cheaper than getting NT Server + IIS for 'free'. They changed NT Worstation licence to say you couldn't have more than 10 tcp/ip clients at a time.

doh, that's what's driving WinXP.

-Peace
Dave

Re:We will know this is hurting MS when

[jeneag]

No news...

Re:Aussies

[Tet]

Def Leppard and Judas Priest, though: That impresses me.

While I agree with the sentiment, I should point out that Judas Priest are from Birmingham. You could have had Bruce Dickinson, though.

More Praise

[Alastair]

Since we're all in a group hug now :-)

We (at work) have been using Samba for over a year now to serve a small workgroup of NT users. None of us (least of all me, the default sysadmin) are experienced NT or Windows users.

We recently switched our main server from an old (10 years?) SGI Indigo2 XL to a new Dell server - Samba 2.0.6 to 2.0.7. The process of compiling, installing and configuring Samba was straightforward and I can safely say that Samba is one of the most impressive and useful pieces of software I have ever used. Well done and many thanks to all responsible!

I should also put in a good word for O'Reilly for allowing the free distribution of the 'Using Samba' book - invaluable.

Maintaining mixed unix/NT can be a real chore (and I won't even mention Clearcase), but Samba has made it work beautifully. It's a pity that we also ended up with a Syntax TAS (Totalnet Advanced Server) system - purely for Clearcase ... it 'works' (well, actually it does), 'guaranteed support', 'recommended' ... :-/

At some point in the future, when I have time, I'd like to shift Clearcase, and it's SMB appendage TAS, to a Linux/Samba server - just to show it can be done. Then I could get rid of the Ultra5! Which would make me very happy :-)

Now if only there was an easy/cheap way to manage unix and NT users/groups from a unix machine, minus any NT server ofcourse.

Cheers!

--
Alastair
London UK

So what's left to do?

[tangent]

Aside from finishing the PDC/BDC implementation, what else is needed for Samba to completely replace Redmond's implementations?

(You know, the Samba guys have done a wonderful job simply because I have to ask this question. Everything remaining is probably just niggling details.)

--

Re: pam_smb

[larien]

Pam_smb is good (we used it at my old work to save an extra password; we used Samba to share files from Unix to NT and didn't want another password), but you do have to create a Unix user (eg, under NIS) as it needs that information for home directory, uid, gid etc.

Winbind sounds like it's the solution to that problem...
--

Re:Aussies

[dpash]

The M1 bridge over Meadowhall impreses me. I'm impressed it hasn't fallen down yet.

Re:Stupid question about netbios naming resolution

[Ross C. Brackett]

As Mr. Allison previously noted, the ability to do this is built into the latest Samba. Just FYI, it is possible to do NetBios name resolution without Samba on the unix machine.

This long document on MSDN (scroll about 1/3 the way down to "Enabling WINS lookup") discusses setting up Microsoft's DNS server to use WINS to resolve names to any client that can point to a DNS server, including those which can't run Samba (OS/400, etc.) I've used it at work for a year with few problems.

Of course, you have to run Windows as your DNS server, which you may have technical or perhaps theological objections to. However, you can always have MS DNS forward on to your BIND server if it doesn't find the record in WINS, thus allowing you the best of both worlds (that's what we do.)

Re:"authentication source"?

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

But that's not the point of Samba. Want directory services ? Use OpenLDAP. Want Kerberos ? Use MIT Kerb5 or Heimdal. Want DNS ? Use bind. Want DHCP ? Use a dhcp daemon (University of Washington I think). Want Terminal Services ? Use X, or vnc.

Are you getting the picture ? :-).

You're comparing Samba, which is just the Windows file/print/authentication service for Windows clients on UNIX, with an entire Win2k/NT load.

You should be comparing a full UNIX/Linux distro. containing Samba to do a fair comparison.

Regards,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:This feature list makes me very happy...

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Check out sybase tools. MS-SQL server is wire compatible with Sybase (it uses TDS - Tabular Data Stream protocol. Proprietary though :-( ).

Standard Linux sybase tools should talk to SQL server no problem (at least they used to). I depended on this in a previous life :-).

Regards,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:Aussies

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

I remember aquaplaning on that bloody thing. Nearly killed me :-). God I *hate* driving on the M1....

Have they knocked down the cooling towers yet ?
:-).

Jeremy.

Re:Aussies

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Ah. You must be a southern git then :-).

Jeremy.

Re:Stupid question about netbios naming resolution

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Already included in the 2.2.0 Samba. Look for the nsswitch "wins" module. I forgot to mention it (we've addeda *lot* of stuff :-).

Cheers,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

BTW: I just uploaded the Red Hat rpms for 2.2.0 for Red Hat 6.2 and 7.0 intel onto samba.org.

Re:Aussies

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Oh - a black pudding muncher..... :-). We'll, we all have our crosses to bear... :-).

Jeremy.

Re:Aussies

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

I'm not a bloody Aussie, I've never even *been* to bloody Australia :-). I'm from *Sheffield* (where they do "the Full Monty" :-) :-).

You're thinking of *Andrew*. He's a bloody Aussie !

Bloody foreigners, not knowing the difference between Australia and the UK, I dunno... mumble, grumble....

:-).

Cheers,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:Why this is tremendous...

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

This is why winbind is so useful for creating Samba appliances. No more local users or groups, just drop the thing into the NT domain and go....

Cheers,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:Compilers breaking because they're BROKE

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Actually, the line I use when developing Samba is :

-Wall -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-qual

to get *really* medieval on the code... (with apologies to "Pulp Fiction" :-) :-). Plus we run Samba though the IRIX compiler (which is also very, very picky....).

Cheers,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:Point and click printing

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

A "braindamage implementation issue" is a printer driver server design that expects to be able to run printer driver binaries *ON THE SERVER THAT IS SERVING THEM OUT TO CLIENTS*. If you think back to the dim and distant past, when NT ran on other things than an Intel CPU then you'll realize how broken this is.....

Of course that's been fixed by that "portable" OS, Windows 2000 :-).

As Samba runs on other things than x86 boxes this is braindamage for us...

Regards,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:"authentication source"?

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

It means it's not completely a PDC, 'cos it doesn't do replication or BDC Stuff yet - but it works well enough to put Windows 2000 or Windows NT clients into a Samba hosted domain, and have people log in and authenticate against it, and download profiles from it.

For many small sites this is all they need - not the full PDC stuff.

That's why I didn't say PDC, but used the phrase "authentication source".

Cheers,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:Point and click printing

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

9x clients were already supported by the 2.0.x codebase. They're also supported in the same way that W2k/NT servers do it in this new release.

I didn't mention it 'cos we already had that functionality - so it wasn't news :-).

We've now got a *complete* (modulo bugs and one braindamage implementation issue, hang out on samba-technical@samba.org for details) implementation of W2k/NT point and print. That *includes* W9x driver download.

Cheers,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

praise Him

[mvh]

Praise the Lord, and Jeremy Allison. I just hope MS doesn't screw things up again. Samba is one of the best things to happen to Linux servers. I've personally been able to circumvent the purchase of 3 MS NT/2000 Servers because of the Samba team's good work and my personal propaganda.

Thanks.

Re:Still too hard

[EnglishTim]

Jesus, what an arsehole.

Re:Aussies

[hayden]

Your just jealous us colonials beat you at the cricket and rugby now days (and we're working on the soccer) :) Allowances must be made for Americans.

Much prefered "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" myself. Not made in Sheffield but still bloody funny.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

Re:"authentication source"?

[PlazMatiC]

Did samba 2.0.x not do this, though? I'm sure I had my win2k professional machine at home logging into a samba-controlled domain. I'm running 2.2.0a2 now, and it works sweet =). I guess I'll have to upgrade now. ;p

I've also used 2.0.7 to move a novell netware server at work over to linux, handling domain logons from 5 or so client machines, and serving cds, etc. these are only win98 machines, though.

The only problem I've had with it though, is occasionally the client machines will say the password has been rejected. If I look in the samba log, it has 'connection reset by peer' mesages. I've searched on google, and have found other people with the same problem, but no solution. Has this been fixed in 2.2?

Cheers =)

"authentication source"?

[jms]

o Ability to act as an authentication source for Windows 2000® and Windows NT® clients, allowing savings on the purchase of Microsoft® Client Access Licenses.

Can someone explain this? Does this version of Samba in essence emulate Microsoft's licensing agent, allowing free use of features that Microsoft wants you to pay for, or does this mean something else?

Sounds like something that could result in a tidal wave of lawsuits from Redmond.

Re:"authentication source"?

[jms]

Someone needs to make an XBOX DVD with a ready-to-run SAMBA server on it. Pay $300.00, Plug XBOX into network, insert DVD, cancel
order for NT server.

Re:"authentication source"?

[WiPEOUT]

Yes, it was 10 CALs, not 5. Sorry, my mistake.

Re:"authentication source"?

[WiPEOUT]

Windows clients typically authenticate against an Windows Server (be it NT4 or 2000). Each individual client connecting to the Server must have a Client Access License (CAL). Windows 2000 Server comes bundled with 5 CALs, and Windows 2000 Advanced Server comes with 25 CALs. Additional CALs can be purchased seperately. The important point is that CALs are only required if you want to connect to a Windows NT4/2000 Server.

For example, if you plan on having a network of 20 Windows 2000 Professional workstations connected to a single Windows 2000 Server, in addition to the 20 licenses for Windows 2000 Professional and 1 copy of Windows 2000 Server, you would need to purchase an additional 15 CALs.

By providing you with free server software, Samba eliminates the need to purchase CALs, as they are server-specific. In the above example, the customer would only need the 20 Windows 2000 Professional licenses.

WiPEOUT

Re:"authentication source"?

[mpe]

Let's see, you're a company with 60 Windows 2000 Servers in multiple departments scattered around the world. What would you rather have, the management of dealing with server-based concurrency licenses for each server (gee, does this server have 25 or 10 or 5?) or simply buying a CAL for every client you have, and just buying your 60 server licenses?

However you've simply replaced dealing with server based licences with complexities of client based licencing.
The approach of just buying one for each client is fine so long as your network were never to change after that. It's all too possible for someone to forget the CAL with a new machine. Also are they technically transferable? IIRC you need different CAL's for NT4 and 2000 too.
Let alone that both methods are pure money making schemes of software companies. With a per server setup there is at least the possibility that different numbers of licences could actually alter the way things work.

Re:"authentication source"?

[mpe]

SAMBA will provide the most basic of directory services. Nothing like what NDS or Active Directory provide. Not to mention the other native services that Windows 2000 provides that Samba doesn't (IIS, RRAS, Media Services, Terminal Services, DHCP, DNS, PKI, etc.)

Because it dosn't need to. Samba is written primarily for unix, which takes a modular aproach, unlike the Windows "plate of sphagetti" design.
For most of the list you have a quite a choice which program to use, with some things such as MTA, you have a huge choice.

Re:"authentication source"?

[Nailer]

Jeremy,

I know this will happen `when its done', but what's the currentstatus of BDC / PDC functionality (inc. replication). What's a credible date to think that Samba should be capable of this? Are we talking within six months, a year, or more?

Mike

Re:"authentication source"?

[witz]

I think 2k Server comes with 10, not 5. I believe 5 is the number of file-and-print connections you're allowed on 2k Pro and ME. Not that it matters much...

Nope, you're wrong. There is a retail version of Server that comes with 10 licenses. These are server-based licenses, not CALs. IE concurrent user licensing, not enterprise-wide CALs. Unless it actually says "Client Access License", it's a server-based license which means every server has to be licensed for 25 users if 25 users at a time will be connecting in any way. As soon as you have multiple servers, it's cheaper to go the CAL route and buy them seperately from your server license (you can get server licenses with no cals or concurrent licenses).
Win2k Pro has an inherent limitation of 10 connections for the native services (ICS, PWS, SMB, et al). This does not vary and cannot be increased without hacking the machine and violating the license agreement.

My question is what kind of affect, if any, this will have on Microsoft's Win 2k Sever Family sales. Having to bend over to pay for networking liscences (on top of server and workstation liscences) can't be all that popular among their customers.

Next to none. Generally businsses don't deploy Windows 2000 Server solely for authentication and file sharing. And medium, large and enterprise businsses make up more than 99% of server sales.
SAMBA will provide the most basic of directory services. Nothing like what NDS or Active Directory provide. Not to mention the other native services that Windows 2000 provides that Samba doesn't (IIS, RRAS, Media Services, Terminal Services, DHCP, DNS, PKI, etc.)

Re:"authentication source"?

[witz]

First of all, Novell doesn't do seat-based licensing. It's server-based. IE X amount of licenses on a server, once you're past that point, no more connections allowed.
Their idea of seat-based licensing is to give you an enterprise license which gives you unlimited licensing per server. Yeah, that's great.
Let's see, you're a company with 60 Windows 2000 Servers in multiple departments scattered around the world. What would you rather have, the management of dealing with server-based concurrency licenses for each server (gee, does this server have 25 or 10 or 5?) or simply buying a CAL for every client you have, and just buying your 60 server licenses?
The latter is pretty damn simple to keep track of. I've been involved in environments with tons of server-based licenses all over (NT environments). It's a pain to deal with. CALs are easy. You can add servers anywhere in your environment and you don't have to worry about whether or not you have enough licenses to support its client load, since every client is already licensed to access any Windows 2000 server in your organization because of the CAL.

Re:"authentication source"?

[witz]

Jeremy,
With all due respect, I wasn't the one who made the original comparison, asking if this was going to cut into Windows 2000 server sales (which it won't, many SAMBA converts would have just pirated Windows 2000 anyway).

Re:"authentication source"?

[Rares Marian]

Sounds like something that could result in a tidal wave of lawsuits from Redmond.

Normally that would be idiotic, but you can't boyc ott something you don't use.

Re:"authentication source"?

[fanatic]

But then you're still buying MS hardware and software in the XBOX. Better to get a beige box, run Linux/*BSD/whatever and avoid Redmond altogether. Plus no doubt there will be something in the XBOX EULA which will at least try to make this illegal (or convince you it is, at any rate).

--

Re:"authentication source"?

[mango]

My first thought after reading Jeremy's comment is that all the other 'PDC stuff'/Domain stuff can already be done when your 'domain controllers' are all Unix/Samba boxen.

1. Replication? LDAP, NIS, etc.
2. Failover? again, there's already several ways to fail over apps between Unix boxen - just look at Samba as another app (albiet with it's own needs regarding fail-over
3. and?...

Besides playing nice with existing Windows domain-controllers (Primary, Backup, and 2000-native) - what other benefits will Samba bring when it can take care of these issues?

Re:"authentication source"?

[Foochar]

They are both CALs. Microsoft has two types of CALs, per server, and per seat. The per server CALs are connection based, the per seat CALs are not. Every CAL you buy is a "per server" CAL, however Microsoft allows you to convert them to "per seat" CALs.

Both licenses can make sense depending on your arangement. If you have a large number of users who make brief connections then a "per server" paradigm probably will be cheaper. For example if your server is only providing DNS services. On the other hand if your users make fairly permenant connections, or connect to multiple servers then per seat licensing is for you. My company has users store all their files on a network share. At the same time they may be accessing files stored on another server, or printing through a third server. By licensing on a per seat basis we don't have to worry about how many connections there are.

A lot of those other services you mention can be provided by a Linux server. DHCP and DNS are much more robust on a Linux server. Apache provides the same basic functionality as IIS. Terminal Services on the PDC are a bad idea so thats a moot point.

It all boils down to SAMBA having the potential to reduce the number of W2K systems in a mixed shop. In a pure W2K shop it takes something major to make management wake up and decide that some Linux makes sense. Things like a loss for the year or declining stock prices as a result of decreasing earnings.

Re:"authentication source"?

[Foochar]

First off, as another reader clarified, I was refering mainly to user terminal services. Secondly it is not just Microsoft who recomneds that they be seperate boxes. I've looked at several applications that require the PDC and the Terminal Server box hosting the application be seperate systems.

Lastly in the context of the original comment I made your situation would not apply. There are plenty of other ways to administer a Linux box remotely. You can launch a remote X session, have the vnc server installed and launch a vnc viewer on your windows system onto your linux system. Or the simplest way of all telnet (yeah I know for security sake you should use ssh) into the box.

For that matter you could run the windows vnc-server on your system instead of Terminal Services and use vnc for remote administration.

Re:"authentication source"?

[rgmoore]

Of course SAMBA uses and even simple licensing scheme: connect as many clients as you want without any paperwork whatsoever. That's got to be a lot easier to deal with, don't you think?

Re:"authentication source"?

[MrBogus]

I believe 5 is the number of file-and-print connections

A file and print connection is just one thing that would require a CAL. (Essentially anything that uses Windows authentication requires a CAL.)

Who's bright idea was the CAL, anyway?

Microsoft's, although they probably noted that Novell customers were happily paying for seat licences. NT 3.1 didn't require CALs.

Re:"authentication source"?

[MrBogus]

However you've simply replaced dealing with server based licences with complexities of client based licencing.

To be fair to both Microsoft and Novell, they have systems in place to make it eaiser for you to pay them if you are larger organization. Most MS CALs in big shops are not bought 'by the certificate', but instead in a lump yearly estimate. Novell also has similar programs so that you don't have to jump through hoops counting connections on each server.

Re:"authentication source"?

[j-pimp]

The main problem with samba 2.0.x is Win2k clients can't authenticate logons against it. This was done by Microsoft, probally on purpose but possibly because they were only concerned with NT compatibality. With the release of 2.2.0 its now possible for all your 9x and NT boxen to belong to 2k. As far as the issues you mentioned: 1. Replication
Replication wise the SMB/CIFS protocols implement several methods for machines to (query && broadcast && syncronize) lists with each other. My understanding is they made Samba's implementation of these work better with NT and 2k.. 2. Failover
This deals with Sambas ability to act as a BDC and its ability to have a 2k box acting as its BDC. 3. and?...
Well bug fixes and the like as well as other features implemented.

Re:"authentication source"?

[hammock]

Businesses don't pirate Microsoft software if they value thier livelihood. See www.bsa.org for details.

Despite being a .org, the bsa makes a ton of profit-money for policing Microsoft software licences.


"Why didn't I join Microsoft? [LAUGHTER]"

Re:"authentication source"?

[hammock]

Does this version of Samba in essence emulate Microsoft's licensing agent, allowing free use of features that Microsoft wants you to pay for, or does this mean something else?
Sounds like something that could result in a tidal wave of lawsuits from Redmond.

Funny you should mention this situation. Are you familiar with Gateway Services for Netware included with Windows 2000 Server? What this allows you to do is set up a Novell server using IPX/SPX, connect a Win2k server to it with that service running, and an entire Win2k TCP/IP network of Windows clients can use the Novell server and only have to buy a single Netware license, since it's only using a single connection (the Win2k Server). Think of it as NAT for a Novell Server.

A tidal wave of lawsuits? I don't see any from Novell against Microsoft, why should Microsoft care if Samba beat them at thier own (dirty) game?

"Why didn't I join Microsoft? [LAUGHTER]"

Re:"authentication source"?

[MeltyMan]

Have you ever seen an M$ PDC replicate?
I sure haven't... :)

Re:"authentication source"?

[Guppy06]

I think 2k Server comes with 10, not 5. I believe 5 is the number of file-and-print connections you're allowed on 2k Pro and ME. Not that it matters much...

My question is what kind of affect, if any, this will have on Microsoft's Win 2k Sever Family sales. Having to bend over to pay for networking liscences (on top of server and workstation liscences) can't be all that popular among their customers.

Who's bright idea was the CAL, anyway?

Re:"authentication source"?

[Jawnn]

On what grounds would they sue? If I am using a Samba server to authenticate Windows clients, what MS server operating system license and/or CAL even comes into play here? No MS servers = no need for MS CAL's.

Re:Still too hard

[IntlHarvester]

Win 2k is rigged to get you to use NTFS permissions exclusively to regulate access (Microsoft texts tell you to just give the Everybody group Full Control permissions)

I'm curious about that. You aren't supposed to use share-level permissions anymore? They still work fine (and are easier for the newbie).
--

Re:Still too hard

[IntlHarvester]

I'd guess doing that means that effective rights don't need to be computed for each file, making it slightly more efficent. Meaning that normally, share perms are probably just fine.

Real typical MCSE fodder, BTW (was one in a past life): Do This, Never Mind Why, Never mind when you shouldn't do this.
--

Re:A wager....

[IntlHarvester]

Breaking implementation would help MS because it would prevent people from buying non MS products.

Note that Microsoft itself has got several implementations of the protocol -- everything from Windows For Workgroups to DOS to OS/2 to earlier versions of NT to Win 95/98 to "LanMan For Unix" are all slightly different. And they have promised to support these patforms.

They probably can't break Samba without accidentally pissing on their own customers (enterprise customers that is, they'll piss on you home users all they want but if tye). That is, unless they spent a large amount of time trying to find the exact breakage that applys to Samba and not any other SMB product.

The only thing that they probably really dislike is the PDC-emulation. Expect that to break (OS/2's PDC functionality on a NT network broke a long time ago). Solution: Keep your PDC on NT unless you are prepared to face the consequenses. Real Solution: Use something like NFS instead of a proprietary protocol.
--

ACL and XFS acl plus trusted linux

[johnjones]

one of the SAMBA team lives @ SGI

XFS i hope will be in the kernel soon
(please linus )

intresting though is SGI released their trusted IRIX stuff and want a trusted linux

hope this does not clash with NSA stuff
(finaly the NSA doing their job of protecting people(US))

but how long are we going to have to wait until I can ditch my solaris boxen and say to the boss yes this is secure and supported AND from a company with nice PR people to keep him happy ?

regards

john jones

Re:Still too hard

[Ether Trogg]

Why exactly was this assinine comment modded to 2? What crack-smoking moderator made the decision to mod this to 2?

Remember, only a fool makes a comment such as yours. A true master offers guidance and encouragement to an obvious newbie, in the hope that a new master shall one day emerge.

Re:a question for Jeremy Allison (or anybody)

[Surak]

Use an automounter. Most modern distros (such as Mandrake 7.2, RedHat 6.x, etc.) include one.

Non root users can mount SMB shares all day long. The old smbmnt isn't needed...the new smbmount is called by the mount command ... the automounter runs as root, so there is no need to give users a SUID binary.

Re:Still too hard

[guacamole]

You are hopeless

Re:Aussies

[rhaig]

we're just US'ians. and y'all talk funny, so y'all must be from the same place. right? :)

ACLs on Linux need patch.

[eMBee]

Unification of Windows 2000 and Windows NT Access control lists (ACLs) with UNIX Access control lists. Allow Windows clients to directly manipulate UNIX Access control entries as though they were Windows ACLs.

to make this work on linux you need to apply the ACL patches to your kernel.

greetings, eMBee.
--

Stupid question about netbios naming resolution

[BeanThere]

This might be a stupid (inexperienced question), but am I the only one who thinks it would be very useful to have Linux's hostname resolving scheme support Netbios name resolution? e.g. to be able to specify for example in /etc/host.conf something like "order hosts, netbios, bind" or something like that. So that typing (for example) "ping foo" would allow for a Netbios-named PC on the LAN called "foo"'s IP to be found, if it isn't in /etc/hosts, for example. We have a WinNT DHCP server on the LAN, and a Linux server that does some other stuff, and entirely Windows clients, so the Windows clients all get "random" IP addresses on startup. It's a pain to keep /etc/hosts up to date under this scheme, and its also a pain to use IP reservations for every client.

Apart from this probably esoteric setup, I'm sure there are many other possible useful applications for this to be supported (e.g. to recreate something like Windows Network Neighbourhood - how does the new KDE do this?). Seems to me "Linux as a workstation" could benefit seriously from this. You don't really want to be going around explaining the "smbclient" command parameters to every employee - in Windows this stuff "just works, point and click", at least from a user perspective.

Is something like this planned? Is it something that would perhaps be easier to support with the planned LibSMB?

Is this already possible and I just don't know how (or haven't tried recently)? Admittedly its been at least 6 months to a year since I last looked at this stuff. Sorry if it's a stupid question.

-----

Re:Stupid question about netbios naming resolution

[KidSock]

am I the only one who thinks it would be very useful to have Linux's hostname resolving scheme support Netbios name resolution?

Well, as Jeremy has pointed out, you may use the "wins" module for nsswitch. I have never used it but I can imaging mixing DNS lookups with WINS lookups might be a little tricky.

like Windows Network Neighbourhood - how does the new KDE do this?). Seems to me "Linux as a workstation" could benefit seriously from this. You don't really want to be going around explaining the "smbclient" command parameters to every employee

Richard Sharpe is woking on libsmbclient which is designed with this sort of stuff specifically in mind. He's also working on a GTK+ app to do just what you suggest.

Incedentally an interesting thing that came out of this was the development of the smb URL syntax which so far is:

smb://domain;user:pass@server/share/path/to/file

or to get a Network Neighborhood list of servers:

smb://workgroup

Re:Stupid question about netbios naming resolution

[helzerr]

While I HATE WINS with a passion and wish it would be fully replaced by DNS everywhere... You may want to try this, which I found here: http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/155/09/2.h tml#1

There may be a way to do this via broadcast the same way Windows machines without WINS do, but I don't know it.

WINS Clients -- Unix and Unix-like Systems It's very easy to configure any computer running SAMBA as a WINS client, but recall from the server discussion that SAMBA can't be a WINS server and a WINS client at the same time. So, first ensure that the smb.conf file entry "wins support = yes" (which configures the SAMBA computer as a WINS server) is a comment (the default). Then edit the next line to read "wins server = www.xxx.yyy.zzz ," where www.xxx.yyy.zzz is the IP address of your WINS server. You don't have to reboot the Unix computer. SAMBA automatically reads the configuration file changes. To force the changes to take place immediately, rather than waiting for SAMBA to read the changes from the configuration file, you can stop and restart the SAMBA programs using the /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb stop and /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb start commands.

You will have to configure a WINS server on one of the Windows servers for this to work, and add the WINS server entry to your DHCP configuration.

DBD::ODBC

[snoman]

Tried the unix ODBC clients? Specifically, perl's DBI driver: DBD::ODBC?

Should do the trick.

Re:DBD::ODBC

[Malcontent]

you still need unix ODBC drivers. Perl's DBI uses freetds so unless you want to pay for an ODBC deriver from merant (thousands of dollars!) you are screwed (freetds is not mission critical).

Re:On Linux and Win 2K RIS

[mpe]

The problem RIS solves is how to make installing an OS image (inluding applications)

The "including applications" can also be interpeted as "Windows can't cope with having it's apps on a network drive very well" :)

So when a user messes up their PC,

So even with Windows 2000 the end user can still mess with things only the admin should really be able to touch?
If something the user did means you have to reinstall the whole OS then something is seriously broken somewhere.

Re:Still too hard

[mpe]

Run cat /etc/passwd | mksmbpasswd.sh > /etc/smbpasswd

This might work on the simplist of setups. But it dosn't scale to many servers using NIS. Which is an area where the samba docs are unclear.

Re:Still too hard

[Malcontent]

It always boggles my mind when people advertise their ineptitude, stupidity or ignorance to the whole world. People would be embarrased to say 'I don't know how to read or write" but they seem downright proud of themselves when they say "I can't do math" or "I can't set up a simple thinng like samba".

If you are dumb keep it to yourself maybe we won't notice.

Re:Unix vs. the Stupid

[Malcontent]

In some ways it's not oracle but in other ways it's better then oracle. It's missing some "enterprise" features like clustering, replication etc but it does have unlimited row sizes, a fantastic rule system, user loadable languages and my fave being able to define your own operators and aggregate functions. Once you use one of these things you will scratch your head and ask why anybody would pay a hundred thousand dollars for a database that does not do it. OTOH if you really need those enterprise features you could probably pay for them. For anybody else it's like butter.

Re:This feature list makes me very happy...

[Malcontent]

freetds is a good effort but it's not suitable for mission critical web sites.

Re:This feature list makes me very happy...

[Malcontent]

tds support in sql7 is a bit flaky and worse in w2K. MS is going to ditch TDS support soon because they don't like the fact you can connect to sql server from linux/apacha/php (plays nice with others!). They want to force you to use windows and ODBC/ADO/OLEDB or whatever their alphabet soup of data access technology of the day is.

Re:A wager....

[Malcontent]

" It would be very hard for them to change something and not have it affect a lot of implementations. "

why would it be hard for them? Breaking implementation would help MS because it would prevent people from buying non MS products. MS has a history of backstabbing companies that it partnered with. Did they all find god all of a sudden or something?

Re:Still too hard

[Malcontent]

Hey but I can set up samba in under 30 minutes!

Re:More Praise (and more...)

[paRcat]

Anybody familiar with Goldmine contact management software?

We had it running on NT for about a year and a half. It served a consistent 70-73 records/sec. The server needed to reboot at least 3-4 times per week. The Goldmine clients recieved "blob" errors (dbf) at least once, usually twice, a day.

Since the software is just served up to the Windows clients and run there, I decided to move it to a Samba server. I installed 2.0.7, made it the PDC, and also enabled wins resolution. Hey, cool, three birds with one stone...

That server has been up for 38 days, 16 hours with *no* problems *at all*. Add to that, I get at least 170 records/sec, up to 400/sec at times. That translates to everyone being happy.

Thanks to the Samba team!

Yea!!!

[questionlp]

It is really nice to see that Samba is getting a lot closer to a real Windows NT server! I have been using Samba 2.0.7 where I work and it has worked very well (although we don't have a lot of people using it, but it works).

DFS is a really nice feature to have, since a sysadmin can create a single SMB share that links to all of the other network shares... less to remember and less support calls like, ``where's such-and-such folder again?''.

Also being able to edit the ACL directly from a Windows NT/2000 workstation is nice... probably won't have to do a lot of chown/chmod-ing again :)

new section

[po_boy]

Also, notice that this is hanging out in the elite new developers section!

Re:new section

[fsck!]

Yeah, but they do feel a lot like freshmeat. I wonder if they realised that. It's cool though, since I have long since forgotten my fm account info.

Also, people that strongly believe that /. should not carry fm-like stories can just block this section.

--

Re:Why this is tremendous...

[phutureboy]

My boxes are all running SAMBA bound to an internal NIC

And would this not offer unfettered access to your internal network if one of the boxes was compromised through its public interface?

Might be better to have a staging server behind the firewall, and use rsync or something to update the public webservers.

Something to think about.

--

Re:a question for Jeremy Allison (or anybody)

[phutureboy]

IIRC, smbmount/smbmnt is not really part of Samba, but rather a separate package which is included in the distro for the convenience of users. I seem to remember reading in the FAQ that you're on your own with questions about it.

Couldn't you make a shell script that contains a 'umount /mnt/winmachine' and then make that script suid?


--

Re:Point and click printing

[0xA]

My mistake, good job guys.

Point and click printing

[0xA]

Full support for the automatic downloading of Windows 2000 and Windows NT printer drivers, providing the first full implementation of the Windows NT point-and-print functionality independent of Microsoft code.


This is a huge acomplishment. Using samba's print services has always been a bit of a PITA in large networks. You get a print spooler that doesn't hang when you look at it funny but you had to install drivers for each printer on the workstations. Micrsoft's server products will automagicly provide a driver for clients when you connect to the shared printer, now samba does it too.

Hats of to Jeremy and the Samba team, this is a great feature.

Would have been kind of nice to see 9x clients supported too though.

Great Colors (OT)

[rkent]

And if any slashdot editors are reading this, the colors in this section absolutely freakin' rule. Much better than YRO, for instance, which has always made me feel like puking.

Re:Great Colors (OT)

[MCZapf]

That's odd...I noticed the colors too. I was just thinking about how I like them better than the colors found on the rest of Slashdot. But, maybe I just noticed them because this whole section is new.

Re:Point and click printing

[Tsujigiri]

What is a "braindamage implementation issue"?

"I'll take the red pill, no, blue. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH........"

MS-'kerberos' support

[fanatic]

Does this have support for the bastardized non-open protocol MS created out of kerberos?

--

Samba browsing DAVE shares

[sparkmanC]

Has anyone gotten this to work?
I always get "file not found" errors after using smbmount on a service shared from a Mac.
Can any of the samba hackers here help me?

Re:(VERYOT)The color scheme is ripped from...

[Glonk]

It's also Hotmail's color.

I've always liked it, my self.

Why this is tremendous...

[alexhmit01]

My boxes are all running SAMBA bound to an internal NIC, which lets me manage them from my Windows workstations. Whether I'm logged in at the office or VPN'ing in, I can reach my OpenBSD boxes and update websites, develop, etc.

I have the SAMBA servers as part of the domain, but it is a hacky solution. I map everyone's NT Domain name to a UNIX name, and they can access the appropriate files.

NT Domain integration was always a little strange. With SAMBA 2.2, the issues should be much cleaner. ACcording to the release, I don't need to create Unix AND NT users, I can just grant access to my NT Domains. This was theoretically possible before with pam_smb (or smb_pam) but was always a confusing mess.

Also, even if I need to create accounts for the users that log in, not having to create accounts for the users that ONLY access via SMB will be a blessing. Not having a bunch of accounts with shell false just to support SAMBA will make life easier.

Adding an NT File Server is a joke, I plug it in, join the domain, create local groups (if I want) and share files with the permissions. Easy as pie.

Doing the same on SAMBA was a pain because I needed to give each user a UNIX account. This meant that a server for 5-10 people was fine, but trying to give an arbitrary group access to the machine was a nightmare.

This will be a tremendous release, and I look forward to putting it on test servers soon and deploying it in production in the next few months.

Alex

Re:Why this is tremendous...

[alexhmit01]

Yeah, winbind was the "needed feature" for SAMBA. Hopefully this makes SAMBA a real solution instead of a quick Hack. I liked SAMBA as a way to access my Unix boxes, but I hated trying to use it as a real File/Print Server. Now it may be a solution to the never ending need for more NT servers.

Alex

A wager....

[biohazard99]

Scheduled release for Windows XP is in the near future, but I don't belive it has went gold yet, I say M$FT breaks everything again, or in a friendly windowsupdate patch soon after release.

Re:A wager....

[KidSock]

why would it be hard for them[(MS) to change the protocol and break Samba or other CIFS servers and clients]?

Because the packet formats and server/client behavior has been documented by MS themselves. It's not great documentation but it's good enough that if they changed anything fundamental they would invalidate the dozens of server and client implementations based on their own instructions. Do you think companies like Network Appliance, EMC, IBM, HP wouldn't have a total freakn' canniption? They have enough legal troubles as it is. The only thing I could see them changing is paripheral stuff like RPC calls and domain authentication/management stuff. Also, it would be contradictory to their recent(since ~97) behavior of documenting the protocol and answering questions. The Storage Network Industry Association(SNIA) recently released an enhanced version of the current spec based on addition information from MS. Yes, their actually playing ball on this one(the irony is that other vendors have been stingy with what they have learned about CIFS over the years(this is what the SNIA is trying to remedy)).

Besides CIFS/SMB is such a complete and utter mess that they run the risk of someone coming up with a MUCH better protocol all together. You could do all of what CIFS/SMB does and more in half the traffic. For example to issue an an RPC command you have the RPC layer, which is encoded in a Transaction2, which is encoded as an SMB, which is passed over the NetBIOS session service. It's as if every time they came up with somthing new(e.g. RAP) they just slapped it right on top of that last thing. What a nightmare! It makes NFS look like ftp. Beleive me, they don't care if you can interoperate with it. I doubt they fully understand the dynamics of this rediculous protocol. If they so much as looked at the code funny they would seriously affect the stability of the Windows platform(this has actually been the source of a great deal of instability in Windows; the server, as well as quite a bit of other sillyness runs in the Kernel).

Re:A wager....

[KidSock]

Scheduled release for Windows XP is in the near future, but I don't belive it has went gold yet, I say M$FT breaks everything again, or in a friendly windowsupdate patch soon after release.

I'll take that bet. Microsoft has actually been quite cooperative with the Storage Network Industry Association(SNIA) in providing more detailed information on how the Common Internet FileSystem(CIFS) (yes, that's MS's offical name for their networking protocol) servers and clients are supposed to work. It would be very hard for them to change something and not have it affect a lot of implementations. Now authentication software is a different story. I'm not sure what the status of their Kerberos business is.

Re:Aussies

[andy@petdance.com]

I'm from *Sheffield* (where they do "the Full Monty" :-) :-).

Full Monty doesn't impress me. Def Leppard and Judas Priest, though: That impresses me.
--

Re:Aussies

[andy@petdance.com]

I should point out that Judas Priest are from Birmingham.

My mistake. I was thinking of the Judas Priest album Sheffield Steel, but of course the album is actually British Steel . Sheffield Steel is a Joe Cocker album.
--

Re:Aussies

[jallen02]

Dammit, your always smiling so much Jeremy. Hehe it forces me to smile :-) in :-) reply :-)

Me thinks your just happy to undermine :-) microsoft :-) with :-) samba :-)

Jeremy (Yeah its my name too:-)

(VERYOT)The color scheme is ripped from...

[yerricde]

That's odd...I noticed the colors too. I was just thinking about how I like them better than the colors found on the rest of Slashdot.

Probably because they remind you of the spam-free experiences you've had on Kuro5hin, where YOU choose the stories. K5 uses #006699; Slashdot/developers uses #336699. The perceptual difference between sRGB #006699 and sRGB #336699 is negligible.

Differences between Slashdot and Freshmeat

[yerricde]

Can't we just save everyone the trouble of bookmarking two sites and just glue /. and Freshmeat together

You don't call Slashdot "Slashf---ed" when it covers dot-com bad news. So why call it Slashmeat? Slashdot covers only newsworthy software releases. This includes packages critical to system and network structure (OS kernels, server software, major security patches, etc.) and "cool" stuff that fits the day's omelet. The new Developers section goes a long way toward this*. If you want, you can exclude this section in your user settings if you don't want to look at so-called "Slashmeat."

Either way, don't bother bookmarking two sites. A link to OSDN Freshmeat II is in the OSDN box to the left of the textarea where I paste this very comment.

* It also may represent budget cuts in the OSDN division of VA Linux Systems Inc. If scoop and Taco can work together nicely enough, the integration of Slashdot and Freshmeat may be a Good Thing for LNUX's bottom line.

Compilers breaking because they're BROKE

[yerricde]

And when Linux kernels rev and compilers break, this is....? Progress? Innovation?

The GCC developers are not as worried about backwards compatibility as they are about CORRECTNESS. If new features highlight optimization BUGS or standards NON-CONFORMANCES in a given compiler, the compiler is at fault. GCC has kept up very nicely. If you are worried about a new compiler breaking your old code, compile with gcc -Wall to show where your code relies on non-conforming misfeatures of old compilers.

Where the colors come from.

[krow]

I picked them because I use them on http://tangent.org/ and happen to think they are pretty cool for webpages.
FWIW I happen to be color blind :)

Re:Unix vs. the Stupid

[tulassay]

when talking about "enterprise-ready" open source software, PostgreSQL is definitely in there. (even more with their brand new 7.1 release)

Other Samba News

[istartedi]

Fact:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010417/0071.html

Opinion:

Slashdot mentioned VA Linux in this article. This makes it more difficult to complain about the lack of "full disclosure". On the other hand, important material information is still missing.

It seems that in an effort to appear unbiased, the editors are reluctant to post anything about VA Linux at all, even when it is perfectly legitimate to do so. VA Linux hiring top level Samba developers is major news. Don't be ashamed, be proud!

In their effort to avoid being perceived as a PR arm of VA Linux, they are being somewhat evasive and this is backfiring.

Re:Other Samba News

[stylewagon]

Yup, there's another version over on c|net as well. Tridgell and Allison are now on the VA NAS team. [ VA Systems press release ]

Re:Point and click printing

[dan_bethe]

I would think that typically, the sysadmin can set up an open standard print server, like lpd or CUPS, which can abstract away any printer as a common PostScript device of varying pixel and color resolution. That assumes that the sysadmin selected a printer which is compatible with an open-standard print server.

Here's my procedure for supporting proprietary clients from an open standard print server.

I typically buy a printer that's supported by Linux, set up a Linux print server, then export that via lpd, Appletalk, and Samba. Then I install the standard Apple Laserwriter driver on any Windows clients, because it's simply a Postscript driver. In fact, you'll find that a lot of the entries in the Windows driver database are simply alternate names for or versions of the Apple Laserwriter driver because it's just Postscript. Then I install MacOS's standard Postscript lpr client on the MacOS client hosts.

Another time, I made Linux print to a totally proprietary printer. It was an HP 3150, which is an excellent value although proprietary; sometimes you take the hit and run with it. You can install an ethernet adapter from HP, on any parallel printer device of any kind. Then on the aforementioned print server, I installed VMware and Windows 98 with the proprietary drivers, which exported the printer to Samba, which reexported it as Postscript. That whole virtual machine was just another printer driver!

That's almost as crazy as writing an open source, open standard implementation of a reverse engineered Microsoft protocol based on their buggy specs and implementations. ;) But it's still a good idea to try to eventually directly support the alleged standards, to support the exceptional cases where a direct local client-side driver is necessary.

I am sure there are people who are unfortunate enough to have chosen very driver-specific proprietary devices for printing and imaging, but in most cases it was technicall preventable.

===

Re:Point and click printing

[dan_bethe]

I know what you mean, but don't like it! Do it only when absolutely forced, until you can actually fix it! One should have bought a real printer with open standard protocols built in. My time, frustration, shame, and the ethernet adapter were far more valuable than the $200-400 saved on the sticker price. :(

===

Re:Aussies

[T'lexii]

With all your good karma from working on Samba this life, I'm sure you'll reach *bloody aussie* status soon ;)

a question for Jeremy Allison (or anybody)

[Srin Tuar]

I am running an older version of samba, where I have smbmnt suid root so that non root users can mount SMB shares.

The bug that bothers me most is when a windows box goes down (can you imagine that?) only root can unmount the share.

My question is whether this aspect of samba has been fixed. I have combed through all the online material and cant seem to find an answer to that.

Re:a question for Jeremy Allison (or anybody)

[KidSock]

The bug that bothers me most is when a windows box goes down (can you imagine that?) only root can unmount the [smbmount] share.

Use autofs. I believe it can recover from this condition but if you actively try to access the share while the Windows machine is down it might take a while to reset.

To do this, add a line like this to your /etc/auto.misc (in the case of Red Hat at least). Notice in this example I specify the uid as the user to be given access. That's because I only wanted jimbo to have access to that share. I believe you can use the mount 'user' option to allow any ordinary user to mount the volume. Now start/restart with /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs restart and simply do like ls /misc/jimbo1 and viola. You don't even have to use the mount command either.

Example /etc/auto.misc entry:

jimbo1 -fstype=smbfs,username=jimbo,uid=500,fmask=770,dma sk=770,password=mypass,workgroup=myntdomain ://jimbo1/myshare

Make sure the permissions are strick in this file though!

Re:Still too hard

[KidSock]

I do admit that there is one thing that could be a lot easier. By default Samba is not configured to use encrypted authentication but it is required by Win98 and up. I would say this little dude stops most newbies in there jammies. And yet they don't make setting that up trivial. Here's how you do it anyway (see /usr/doc/samba-2.0.6/docs/textdocs/ENCRYPTION.txt or equivalent for details).

Run cat /etc/passwd | mksmbpasswd.sh > /etc/smbpasswd and put the directives:

encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/smbpasswd

in the [global] section of /etc/smb.conf. Now run the smbpasswd program like you would the normal passwd program to hash the password and update the /etc/smbpasswd file. Finally restart smbd like /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb restart and try to access the share. It should work now!

Re:Good job guys!

[KidSock]

yeah but NetBIOS over TCP/IP does, dumbass.

Actually I don't think that will work. You need a netbios name in the CalledName field during session establishment. To get that name you need to do a node status request(or know the name of the machine your connecting to in advance) and then connect by ip. Theoretically it can be done but not with smbmount. It will try to do a broadcast lookup and stop right there because(as the other poster pointed out) it will get blocked at the router.

Re:Good job guys!

[KidSock]

Probably was your machine in the other room.

Re:Good job guys!

[KidSock]

Ahh, well then you're connecting to your neighbors machine. Excuse me. Like I said it won't make it past your broadcast address. BTW, I would be carefull about doing this in the first place. Your hostname is passes during nbt session establishment. So if by chance it really is your neighbor(I'm not joking about this, they could be very close by), they could theoretically track you. In fact if they happen to be running Samba, a log file with your hostname will be written in /var/log/samba with debugging info!

RedHat 7.1 now out of date ;)

[jmeff]

Wow, just a day after the release of RedHat 7.1, one of the most important server apps that's been in testing for over 2 years, and in development for even longer, is finally released as stable! Couldn't RedHat see this coming? What a lost opportunity, oh well. It seems many other things like Python 2.1, Postgres 7.1, and Gnome 1.4 aren't in RedHat's latest release either (gnome1.4 understandably missing).

Congratulations should also go to Luke Kenneth Caston Leighton who engineered most of the PDC-related code and who undoubtedly made samba 2.2 possible. Check out www.samba-tng.org for more info on PDC development (TNG = the next generation).

Re:RedHat 7.1 now out of date ;)

[jmeff]

Yes, but I'm talking about a few important packages, such as the kernel, samba, postgres, kde, etc., and samba 2.2 is a release that's been coming for over 2 years now. Redhat should have been testing the samba 2.2 alpha releases for some time now, and be ready to include them and support it (maybe they already are ready). There's a huge opportunity there to be the first distribution to provide a near replacement for an NT PDC (unless you need BDC's), and they could have done it if they'd managed to do the timing slightly differently. It'll now be another 4 months or more before RedHat gets 7.2 out and supports samba 2.2 out of the box. We don't even know if it'll be in RedHat 7.2, because redhat seems to only does minor updates between dist rev's (binary compatibility for sure, .conf file compatibility too?).

XBill

[Meech]

I thought that the most important app was XBill? :-)

Let's not forget our friends

[AintTooProudToBeg]

the most important server apps on Linux

And BSD
And AIX
And Solaris
And Irix
...

Still too hard

[jchristopher]

Samba lets you access Linux shares from Windows, right?

I tried it under Mandrake, but it was impossible to setup for a clueless newbie.

Try again.

Re:Still too hard

[jchristopher]

Thanks for making my point - why is it so hard?

Hint - "other OSs are hard too" is not an answer that will help nontechnical people use Linux.

Re:Still too hard

[Guppy06]

The same is true for setting up shares in Win 2k as a clueless newbie. Windows 9x simplifies things so that you're pretty much sharing an object with everybody, or not sharing at all. Sharing in 2k is a wee bit more complicated. It's tied in to the user log-ins, so when you share an object in 2k, you have to go about picking users or groups to have access, sifting through the 25 different access control options...

Samba is aimed at the "real" (client/server) networking crowd, and in that it seems to be doing quite well. I'd say Samba and Win 2k sharing are about the same difficulty to set up, with extra marks going to Samba for not making me go through one of those damned wizards... :)

Re:Still too hard

[Guppy06]

"Thanks for making my point - why is it so hard?"

Short answer: security/technical reasons. It's a limitation of the client/server model, not the OS.

The whole reason for having logins and passwords on your network is to be able to regulate access to resources. If you're going to share resources on such a network, then you're also going to have to regulate who has access to that resource.

In such an environment, setting up a share is always going to be a technical issue, not for the faint of heart. You're going to have to know who you want to share with and how much control you want them to have.

Trying to make Samba work more easily for the non-technical is like trying to design AutoCAD or Pro/Engineer for the non-drafter. There's a point where, if it needs to be THAT simplistic, you should consider using Paintbrush instead.

Re:Still too hard

[Guppy06]

"Setting up W2K shares is nothing more than a few mouse clicks"

Preparing to share is a different story. Win 2k is rigged to get you to use NTFS permissions exclusively to regulate access (Microsoft texts tell you to just give the Everybody group Full Control permissions).

Once you look at configuring NTFS permissions, you're faced with a monolithic list of access control options (especially if you click on the "advanced" button), many of which seemingly overlap ("Write" and "Modify?" "Read" and "List Folder Contents?"). While I don't have the network admin experience to be able to say whether NTFS or Linux's permission structure (user/group/other, read/write/execute) is better, I do know that chapters 14 and 15 ("Securing Network Resources with NTFS Permissions" and "Administering Shared Folders," respectively) of Microsoft's MCSE Training Kit -- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional have a total "estimated lesson time" of just over 3 hours.

Re:Still too hard

[Guppy06]

The aforementioned MCSE training book has a review question:

What is the best way to secure files and folders that you share on NTFS partitions?

And, according the appendix, the answer is:

Put the files that you want to share in a shared folder and keep the default shared folder permission (the Everyone group with the Full Control permission for the shared folder). Assign NTFS permissions to users and groups to control access to all contents in the shared folder or to individual files.

It would appear, then, that they're trying to ween people (at least the technically savvy) away from share permissions. Since they also suggest educating network users on good sharing habits, it seems safe to assume that they'd rather everybody do it this way.

(Personally, I would have used the network share permissions to impose slightly more restrictive access over a network connection, but that's just paranoid me)

Whether this is just to make management of permissions easier, or if this is part of a sinister plot to make sure MS has access to your hard drive when .Net arrives remains to be seen. :)

Speaking of paranoia, CYA legal statement: The above quoted material is copyright 2000 Microsoft Corporation and is reproduced without permission.

Re:This feature list makes me very happy...

[mgkimsal2]

Look also for freetds. The latest version is supposed to support SQL2k, and we hope to be testing it soon against that. It's worked fine for SQL7 for the past 6 months here, and the author has been very helpful when we've needed it. :)

Re:Unix vs. the Stupid

[Telastyn]

Quite true, though unless I'm mistaken Apache and Samba were developed 2-3 years before postgreSQL, I may be mistaken. If so accept my appologies.

Re:Unix vs. the Stupid

[Telastyn]

Perhaps you misread... I said that samba on most platforms is much more stable than win9x, or NT4. win2k I would debate you depending on the *nix variant chosen, and the way samba was used.

Flamebait is a far better cry than being just as stupid as management that require companies to use windows clients.

Windows (2000) has it's benefits, especially compared to modern Linux. Modern linux has it's benefits over windows and more traditional unicies. Traditional unicies have benefits over windows and modern linux.

Linux zealots should pull their heads out of their asses and realise what a bad name they're creating for their beloved.

Unix vs. the Stupid

[Telastyn]

I'd like to thank the Samba team for developing one of the two first "enterprise" useful tools for linux/unix (apache being the other). Their work has made it possible for Administrators who want the stability and functionality of unix while being hamstrung by technical incompetance at a managerial level.

"We need to support all these windows users."

"okay, let me setup this file server... yeah... windows..."

Re:Unix vs. the Stupid

[TheAwfulTruth]

Sorry, this is pure flamebait. Anytime someone says anything negative about *nix or anything positive about windows the flamebait tag is pulled out and stamped on the post instantly, yet this type of thing gets high "Funny" or "Insightful" scores. Come on. /. could be 10 times the site it is today if this sort of thing wasn't so rampant. Flamebait is flamebait, mark it so. (Haha, go ahead and mark this reply as flamebait just to "get" me...)

This feature list makes me very happy...

[kstumpf]

I'm developing my company's Intranet on Linux. My web server cluster is literally a solitary island in a Microsoft-centric corporation. When given the goals for our Intranet, I hit alot of roadblocks due to the need to interface my Linux servers with the Windows network, mainly due to our recent migration to Win2K.

After looking over the feature list, this release will allow me to accomplish the things my superior's desire.

Samba is obviously a critical effort in increasing corporate acceptance of *nix in traditional Windows shops. My boss is really starting to like telling everyone how much money the company has saved by implementing our web efforts in a Linux environment. We're using less hardware, have superb uptime, and saving a fortune on software licenses.

Without Samba, my next project may have been written in VBScript. Not a pleasant thought.

Now if I can find a reliable interface to MS SQL2000, I'll be all set. :)

Re:This feature list makes me very happy...

[kstumpf]

Sounds good. I'd heard this about SQL7, but was not sure if SQL2K would uphold it.

DFS?!

[Soruk]

This has to be the first mention of "DFS" I have seen in a long time - since the BBC Micro :-)

Re:Let's face it ..

[danox]

Don't knock the mexican food. Anyone in Sydney should check out Azteca's mexican restaraunt on avoca street, Randwick

The guy who runs it is mexican so you know its authentic. The nachos is part of my regular diet. And if you are trully adventurous, there's the kangaroo fajitas

Australia rocks, and don't deny it.

Let's face it ..

[SirFlakey]

Projects like Samba, OpenH323, 1/2 of Enlightenment and a fair few others are why I am still in Australia =) ..(yes I know it's a collaborative effort - just good to know we've got some very smart people doing cool things =) not just the "Why whoop your collective butts in sports and we're still all criminals mentality") =)
--

Re:Let's face it ..

[raju1kabir]

Projects like Samba, OpenH323, 1/2 of Enlightenment and a fair few others are why I am still in Australia

Yeah, I used to live in Australia. But guess what?

Where are the Samba developers now? Where are almost all of the people from high-profile projects that originated in Australia? That's right, Santa Clara county. Or maybe suburban Boston.

In Australia you can't get a decent flat-rate internet connection, nobody returns phone calls, computer equipment costs too much, everybody surfs all damn day instead of doing any work, the phone plugs are the size of battleships, and they don't have any decent Mexican food. Don't get me wrong - it's a fun place to live and the people are great, but I think your jingoism is warping your perception.

Re:Let's face it ..

[raju1kabir]

You're crazy - Had to Happen in North Sydney is the best Mexican food this side of the Pacific. Flat-rate broadband cable is available in most cities now, and works nicely. You evidently left too soon.

"The best Mexican food on the this [western]side of the Pacific" is like "the best beer in Italy."

I'm glad to hear about the cable modems, though I hear they have usage caps and overuse fees, but let's face it: The biggest problem always was and still is the Brobdingnagian phone plugs. I once needed to plug three devices into one jack, and ended up having to add two rooms to my house to make space for the adapter.

Interesting problem

[Mytzle]

I work with a very large Citrix Metaframe 1.8 running on Windows2000 server environment. Most of our clients run AIX machines, and connect to the servers using the AIX build of the ICA client tool. We have a huge DFS space which our users also wish to connect to. We found a problem where our DCE servers would authenticate the users and allow them to "net use" to their DFS space, but as soon as someone else mapped to another name space, credendialt os the other users were being overwritten by the most recent autnentication to DCE. This could cause a major problem as I'm sure you all know. In prior versions of the Windows server family (NT4) there was a hack to force the server to use a new pipe for each user, this is not present in 2000. So my question is does anyone know if this release has any impact on my problem?

Re:Point and click printing

[hammock]

The downside is that your print server is still running Windows 98.

The upside is that it reboots in about 5 seconds under VMWare, which is something that happens quite often on the Windows 9x line.

"Why didn't I join Microsoft? [LAUGHTER]"

unattended setup of windows clients.

[jonnosan]

Windows 2k Server allows unattended installation of windows 2k clients without the need for install media or boot floppys. The service is called RIS (Remote Installation Service) and it uses PXE compatable NIC's. These NIC's have a dhcp/tftp client. The theory is you boot one of these computers, during the boot up you press F8, you are prompted for a user name & password, then the an OS image is TFTPed to the local machine.

Although there may be linux distro's that support unattended setup of file servers, and you can also use PXE to boot diskless linux workstations, as far as I know there is no linux distro that will support unattended setup of windows 2k pro workstations in this way.

Re:unattended setup of windows clients.

[almaw]

That's all very well provided you run identical hardware everywhere. I've found Linux to be much easier to set up networks for, as it's simple to create a custom setup disk (RedHat kickstart or whatever) which installs what you want on the OS, and then write a BASH script to copy all the relevant files off a server, set up LaTeX, NIS, etc., etc. It's very hard to install Windows programs with zero-intervention. It's also a lot more difficult to upgrade apps, etc.

Re:On Linux and Win 2K RIS

[jonnosan]

If Wine or DOSEmu can't handle it alone, I'd wager that having an install of Win9x or MS-DOS handy for these programs to access would fix the problem Depends what the problem is :-) The problem RIS solves is how to make installing an OS image (inluding applications) onto a box so easy that any user can be guided through the process over the telephone, AND the process can be completed in 15 minutes, AND the end user doesn't need to have any boot floppies etc. So when a user messes up their PC, telephone helpdesk dudes spend 5 minutes starting the rebuild process instead of 2 hours trying to untangle whatever the user has done, and 15 minutes later the user can log in to their PC. And (if you are using some of the other nifty features of W2k) all their apps will be available and configured for the user also. You can certainly do unattended setups from any distribution media (CD-ROM, NT server, Samba, even a Netware server if you want) but there are some big headaches with scaling these approaches.

Damn

[Rick the Red]

I just downloaded Red Hat 7.1, and already it's out of date!

make me happy too

[juan2074]

I'll take the Ultra 5 when you get rid of it.

Re:Cost and unattended installations

[np_geek]

We're currently in the process of rolling out 50+ samba (2.0.7) servers across the U.S. The installation consists of installing RedHat then running a shell script which sets up: Apache, Samba, Webmin, user permissions, start-up scripts, DHCP server, etc. The whole process takes about half an hour and is unattended once you type ./setup.sh.

Sure, it's not completely unattended, but because it's based on GPL software we were able to save big bucks on licensing and provide a customized admin tool set for non-technical local administrators.

At the same time as this we did an Exchange 2000 / Windows 2000 / Active Directory deployment for e-mail and I can tell you fom experience the Linux / Samba stuff was inifinitely easier to understand. We had to bring in consultants to help us get through the Windows 2000 stuff, whereas I pretty much single handedly configured the Linux servers and the installation routines myself (and I'm not what I would consider a guru, just someone who is willing to put in the up-front work for the long-term gains).

Got a problem with Samba ? Check the extensive, included docs, edit the text based config file, restart the SERVICE, not the SERVER and you're done, clients don't even notice the service was off for 5 seconds. Got a problem on 2000 ? Good luck, no useful docs are included, you have to click 50 things and turn on "advanced view" everytime you want to do something useful and you often have to restart the whole machine - clients definitely notice the server is down for 15 minutes.

If you're talking costs you have to figure long-term and we've already seen the huge difference in support costs (time and money) in dealing with these 2 plaforms. Give me Linux and Samba any day and tremendous kudos to the Samba team for a fantastic product!

Samba absolutely rules

[nate1138]

This has to be one of the coolest bits of software for *nix. Especially with the ability to act as a PDC, it allows an option of what server you want to use to manage your windows clients. I'll go where I damn well please today, thanks.

Developers section?

[TheAwfulTruth]

Why is the innagural post to the developers section about something that is not a developers tool or involved in the barest way with development? Wouldn't this make the entire article "Off Topic"? 8 minutes later is a post about a real development tool. Samba is a network tool. Are FTP and Web servers developer tools too according to /.? Just curious...

Re:Developers section?

[TheAwfulTruth]

Okay, I'll reply to my own post. This is for "Developers" to come and advertise their own wares. My mistake. /. and Freshmeat are one. Move along, nothing to see here...

On Linux and Win 2K RIS

[Guppy06]

"as far as I know there is no linux distro that will support unattended setup of windows 2k pro workstations in this way."

All that is really required to install Win 2K over a network is access to the shared distribution files (via existing OS, client boot disk, or network boot), and the ability to run winnt.exe or winnt32.exe (depending on whether you have an 8/16-bit or 32-bit MS OS). If you want unattended installations, you modify the command string and make an answer file available.

I don't believe it'd take more than a kilobyte of script to automatically point the remote boots to the distribution server (probably through Samba), so there seems to only be one thing that might prevent installing Win2K over the network: Whether or not you can run the installation program.

You have two choices: winnt32.exe under Wine, or winnt.exe under DOSEmu (ie. FreeDOS). Generally speaking, all these initial installation programs do is install a bare-bones version of Win2K onto the computer locally, and then reboot to it to finish the installation (or at least you can configure them to do so). If Wine or DOSEmu can't handle it alone, I'd wager that having an install of Win9x or MS-DOS handy for these programs to access would fix the problem.

So, it would appear that the only thing in the way of Linux supporting RIS-like services for Win2K Pro would be a lack of a snazzy GUI script/program with bells and whistles. I'd do it myself, but I'm not a programmer.

If anybody sees any glaring omissions, please let me know.

Re:On Linux and Win 2K RIS

[Guppy06]

"so easy that any user can be guided through the process over the telephone"

Chapter 3, "Unattended Installations of Microsoft Windows 2000 Server." Total estimated lesson time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.

Besides, the whole point of unattended installs is that there shouldn't be anybody whose hand you have to hold. Wholly within the realm of the IT people.

"the process can be completed in 15 minutes"

That depends entirely upon the network architecture.

"the end user doesn't need to have any boot floppies etc"

Only if you have PXE NICs. If you don't, your options are to pass out floppies, or go through and install them on all the machines. Guess which one would be easier.

"So when a user messes up their PC, telephone helpdesk dudes spend 5 minutes starting the rebuild process instead of 2 hours trying to untangle whatever the user has done"

If the method I outlined earlier is used, Win 2K takes over right after the first reboot (after formatting the HDD and copying over bare-bones system files). Beyond that point (ie. for most of the install process), if something goes wrong, it's Win 2K's fault, not the network's.

But this is besides the point. You're supposed to test these things out before you actually commit to them, and do this after-hours so as not to interrupt anybody with computer down-time or boku network traffic. If you don't, you shouldn't be doing this for a living.

"all their apps will be available and configured for the user also."

This is a part of the install process, not RIS. This is something you modify the command line execution of winnt32.exe or the answer file for. Especially since I don't believe the RIS Wizard will let you do this...

"there are some big headaches with scaling these approaches."

You mean like juggling CALs?

Re:A fix to try

[EvilStein]

How about we just upgrade to MacOS X Server instead?
Share the same sharepoints with Samba and Netatalk?
Use FTP? After all, it's Linux, so you've got an FTP server capable machine.
Transfer via HTTP.
Hell, install Carracho on something.. that works too. :P~

lol

[jeneag]

nice :)

Good job guys!

[jeneag]

But I've got major problem... I have no windows :(