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ZDNet Reviews Samba 2.2
Jeremy Allison - Sam (of the Samba team) writes "eWeek
reviewed Samba 2.2
- they seem to like it !
It's certainly encouraging to get trade coverage like
this, I'm hoping the more people who report Samba use
in their organisation to press outlets will encourage
them to cover more Open Source/Free Software products !
"
With the way they are handling licensing, copy-protection, and this new 'xp' registration, people will finally start to get fed up with this crap, and find the freedom which an OS should give them! Not only that, but with OpenSource software such as Samba, who needs NT/2000!? Sure, you get support, and this HUGE company backs it...So does that mean it is bug-free, or somehow they have 'magic-men' writing code, which does not contain bugs!? Some people think that if they buy M$, the software is less buggy and 'more better!' Hehe, sure, I've got to go, moving up north to sell the Eskimo's some Ice Cubes!
>It's a great product. I just want the day that it can support a network of 600 Windows PC's printing off thousands of pages per day....
Working as a print server is one of the things that samba has shined at for a long time.... 600 PC's not a problem
yeah Cisco uses samba for their print environment for ~48000 people. Now that is not all on one server but I am sure some of the bigger buildings server several hundred people from one box.
You might not care what ZDNet or anyone else thinks of Samba, but if youwant to see Linux and its related programs continue to improve and provide users with an alternative to the Redmond monopolist, then you should care. Anyone who thinks that the technology industry is only about technology isn't paying attention.
I've been doing some stuff in Samba-TNG lately, (TNG has just had a alpha relase btw), and TNG is as we know trying to make a more complete nt clone. One of the good things about tng is that they are doing stuff with ldap (missing in 2.2 ;(). In the future we'll se samba 2.2 servers using winbind to connect to samba-tng servers. Somehow I find that funny.
that would be the "horizontal Samba" the editors performed with your mother last night. that was A's all the way!
In all likelihood they are comparing it to the file sharing built into NT - since it actually
uses a human readable config file and you might have to *gasp* compile the code they give it a
C in comparision to NT/2000's "point and drool" style of interface (or would that be "point and pray that it works and the registry doesn't get fragged so I'm screwed and have to reinstall everything and restore from backups").
Absolutely! What happens when digital rights management begins to interfere with reverse engineering? Folks don't mention that the trouble that the DeCSS folks are in is a direct assault on compatibility engineering. What happens when reverse engineering of Microsoft protocols is found illegal because of rights management intellectual property laws? After all, wasn't the DeCSS code simply about linux compatibility? Of course, the kid forgot to put in region coding support, thats probably why they ended up in court %^)
However, after such a positive review, it grades Samba thus:
USABILITY C
CAPABILITY B
PERFORMANCE B
INTEROPERABILITY B
MANAGEABILITY B
These grades seem unjustified and unfair. Makes me wonder, what exactly is ZDNet comparing Samba to?
To me, the Samba project is probably one of the most important projects to support.
NT/2000, and soon XP, on the desktop is still a dominant force that might take a long time to change.
But, on the server front - that is a different story.
Linux, BSD + Samba = Diversity in the back room. Can't let MS have everything.
Samba Resources
Inside Samba 2.2
Introduction to Samba - Key concepts
Compiling, installing, and Configuring Samba for your environment
Getting Samba to samba: The configuration stage
When I saw "A Home For The Technologically Inept" I was just thinking of ZD Net.
1. give some of the shittiest software ever 5 star ratings
2. are routinely bashed for being MS biased
3. are suddenly considered a worthwhile source when they give an item of free software a good review
meaning:
1. the glowing review is meaningless, they give glowing reviews to buffed and polished turds
2. don't pat yourselves on the back too much, in case you appear two-faced
me too, remove the SPshielD from my email address. We should talk.
~^~~^~^^~~^
With Samba TNG, you can have a samba server in a PDC doing inter-domain trust, and have BDC's.
Also, you can use LDAP instead of smbpasswd, and if you also use LDAP for the posix accounts, you have one place to store the passwords. The passwords are still stored in different fields in the LDAP schema, but keeping them in sync should be mostly trivial.
It basically has a lot of the stuff that Samba 3.0 should have. The catch is that it is still very alpha and shaky, but is also making good progress. And there is a lot of discovery sharing between the two, meaning that both projects are moving forward at great speeds.
I didn't think a company could be both "neutral" and "windows friendly" at the same time! (See also: ZDNet selective censorship)
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
And the How-To on doing that is here.
davecb@spamcop.net
I hope Apple sees the value of including Samba in Mac OS X. Apple should help out the project, at least in some small form.
Lets embrace and extend SMB! : )
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
i have to learn something else now. GREAT!
In this biz you're always learning something new - jeez they told us that in electronics school 25 year ago.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Is a utility like the 'Netware Migration Tool' that came with NT (which also had a nifty Netware License Violation Feature) , call it "NukeNT" or something. Usage: nukeNT and it finds all file shares, create Samba shares and copy all the files over. Then turn off NT and enjoy the uptime.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It's nice to have a large neutral windows friendly site give Samba a thumbs up. I personally think Samba ranks #2 next to Apache of application that trully make linux usable. I have installed several stand alone file servers in place of NT file servers. I am still not convinced that is as fast as NT server but saving a $400 liscencing fee it isn't bad. Not to mention the flexibility of configuration with SWAT.
I am in the process of making a custom server which manages engineering and architectural files. it works in conjuction with a web based app (perl) which manages jobs, hours worked and so forth. but using samba it goes a step further to manage shares initialize new jobs, and run back ups. this is somethign I woudl never dream of attempting on a windoes system.
>It's a great product. I just want the day that it can support a network of 600 Windows PC's printing off thousands of pages per day....
Working as a print server is one of the things that samba has shined at for a long time.... 600 PC's not a problem
Who owns your data?
I am not sure that ZDNET fully understood that this is not Microsoft software and it will only erode Microsoft's installed base
ZDNET used to be a Microsoft-centric camp... Is this a wind of change or a human error? Time will tell.
Currently the new Mac OS X does not have very good networking support. It lacks Appletalk support except for printing. It also lacks Windows filesharing. It would be very simple for Apple to bundle Samba with Mac OS X. They could attach a neat GUI frontend and Mac OS X would instantly be a little more friendly to IT workers.
Samba is in use EVERYWHERE. From small shops to huge multination financial conglomerates like Credit Suisse First Boston. Why? Because it works, and it works well, and for file serving, why on earth would ANYONE pay Microsoft and thei rediculous licensing fees.
Bzzzt, nope. Sorry, I read the resource manuals, all their stuff... (MCSE was actually hard 4 years ago when there weren't study guides out and available to people like me)...
NT 4.0 CAL refers file and print service, not mere authentication... at least that was true for my old CAL agreements...
Alex
SAMBA without WinBind still isn't a general purpose File Server. You need to go and create the Unix accounts. My understanding is that WinBind is Linux only right now, but that it is being merged into the core code. Either way, SAMBA has a great niche in small group servers. For example, if I want a file server for 5-10 people, SAMBA rocks. You can join the SAMBA server to your NT Domain, setup the usermap, and give users access to the shares. For that purpose, I love SAMBA.
We are starting to evaluate SAMBA 2.2, it's great. Our core infrastructure here is NT4 for various reasons, but our OpenBSD machines all share out the relavent portions via SAMBA 2.0. It's terrific, if I'm not at a Unix workstation and want to work on a developing website, I connect to the share in Windows and go nuts. It's terrifically powerful.
From where SAMBA was 4 years ago when I started playing with it, it's a new world. You used to need to use separate accounts and not have reasonable NT integration. This allowed you to share out files, but not seemlessly. WinBind promises to make SAMBA servers drop and forget, just administer everything from your NT groups.
For a reasonable sized office (>10 people) running Windows, I think you'll be happiest with an NT 4.0 Domain with a PDC and BDC, but you can then do your file sharing off your SAMBA boxes. This saves a LOT on NT CALs, as you don't need NT CALs for PDC/BDC access, just file/print sharing. Let SAMBA handle that, and use NT as a domain controller. That way you have central logons without the expense. The cost of two NT servers isn't bad, the cost of NT CALs as your office grows and multiple file servers as access speed matters makes SAMBA great.
Additionally, if you do any web development, share our your site tree and you can edit files from anything. It's great, whether you are using Linux w/ smbmount, Windows with CIFS networking, MacOS Class w/ Dave, or MacOS X w/ Sharity, you have all your files accessable and can be editted locally. That sure beats SSH/Emacs.
Alex
If ever there was a glowing example of "Security through obscurity is no security at all", that's it.
And please, it's spelled "pr0n". We have standards here.
--
"We also still had to type in user names that matched the log-in names of our Windows users in two places (the Unix /etc/passwd and Samba's smbpasswd files) for Samba to work."
/usr/passwd with smbpasswd, either.
I take it they've never used Samba aliases then? And the ability to sync
--
jambo
system.admin.without.a.clue
-- js.
For a long time, the Open Source community has been suffering from the lack of software which is good for customers. Luckily, it is changing these days.
For the purpose of this post, I'd like to differentiate between "plain" good software, and consumer-good software. Just "good" means well-engineered. For example, Linux kernel is very good software. It can be used as such, for instance, in embedded applications. However, customers are interested in the more advanced layers. Therefore, the Linux kernel is useless unless it is used as a base for software which is both good in its own right, and easy [enough] to use.
It seems to me that now the various Linux projects have at last reached the usability threshold. Ximian GNOME 1.4 and the emerging open-source office suites (AbiWord, KOffice etc.) are already very easy and productive. Newer distros have very easy installations that minimize the amount of [command-line] hacking that has to be done to a zero. It is a major victory for Linux, since while we do retain the flexibility of configuring it the way we want, it now much easier for newbies to join the community of Linux users.
SMB is a very major step in this direction. It is definitely good software; it is quite user-friendly, and is still developed further in that direction. It also provides something that Microsoft does not: unconditional interoperability. Linux will support everything.
It is very delightful to finally see Linux becoming ready for the millions of customers. With stuff like SMB and WINE, it is no longer a question of Microsoft vs. Non-Microsoft. It is becoming expensive vs. free, bad vs. good and slow vs. fast. We can win these battles.
On an interesting sidenote, while you still have a ton of idjit-rags (treekillers & bandwith thieves) out there, it's interesting to see an attitude shift within mainstream tech journalism.
For example, while no mainstream press product would have lost a bad word about the evil empire 4 years ago (they buy a lot of ad space), features like product activation receive a mighty frosty welcome nowadays.
Tells me that M$ will have a harder and harder time in the area of spincontrol...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I agree with this idea. While many of use could do samba config manually, having a migration tool in place would be a very nice selling point.
I like the fact that there is a "check Prices" link next to the article. Too bad it dosen't work. That would be sweet... $0.00.
...is the ability to disregard "hidden" shares that are suffixed with $. Gave my unscrupulous co-workers many hours of paranoia wondering why files that are supposed to be in their super-secret warez/p0rn/mp3 shares keep surfacing in a public directory.
..we'll see even more small offices replace their naughty little NT servers with a nice clean samba device, now that even ZD is covering it ;)
1) lots of options - And not only lots of options, but lots of documentation and explanation of how to use the options to your advantage when setting up your Samba server. Out of all of the Linux meddling I've done so far (which, granted, isn't that much), I think Samba is one of the easiest packages to work with.
2) developer/customer support - Just from all of the posts that I have seen Jeremy post to slashdot, I can see that supporting his software is very important to him and his team. This attitude of serving his 'customers' in a top notch manner has largely been lost in today's 'new' economy. I can't begin to tell you how much I despise 'customer service' as it usually involves sitting on the phone or at the store, not being served. And usually crappy service when you do get it.
I, in fact, do not care if ZDNet or anyone else likes Samba. I'm sold on it merely from the human factor of the people who write it. That alone will keep me coming back for more. My advice to the Samba team - KEEP IT UP!