Samba Turns 10

abartlet writes: "Samba is celebrating its 10th birthday - initally released as Andrew Tridgell's humble 'Server 0.5' 10 long years ago. Tridge has made some notes on the past 10 years. And Samba is still going strong, becoming a cornerstone of the Linux community. Samba 3.0 is on its way and promises many new features, including for the first time support as a server in an Active Directory domain! But the biggest thanks goes to all those who have contributed code, bugs, testing, docs and feedback in general. We could not have come the last 10 years without you! -- Andrew Bartlett, Samba Team."

Comments

The begining

[ImaLamer]

I'm glad to see the links to the USENET post along side the story.

Story submitters: Try to do this every time. It's provides context, and you know we all want just click and not hunt it down.

Rev-eng feats never cease to amaze me

[InterruptDescriptorT]

Mad, mad props to these guys for 10 years of work on a protocol that you know Microsoft has worked long and hard to obfuscate through a lack of literature and, to some extent, probably in the arrangement of information in each payload.

I also get the same feeling of awe when I see emulators for proprietary game systems released a very short time after the hardware is. For example, I spent some time writing a little game for the PlayStation to get my hands dirty, which I couldn't have done without the talents of the people who take the time to disassemble the ROMs, write the docs, produce the tools, and analyze the source code.

If there were some way I could contribute monetarily to the Samba project or even some of my time (I have done some rev-eng stuff myself, mostly on undocumented Palm libraries), I would gladly do it. These guys deserve major kudos.

Re:Rev-eng feats never cease to amaze me

[Jodrell]

If there were some way I could contribute monetarily to the Samba project

It's a well known fact that Andrew Tridgell, Samba's creator, accepts Pizza if you feel the urge to be generous. More details in the FAQ:

Andrew doesn't askfor payment, but he does appreciate it when people give him pizza. This calls for a little organisation when the pizza donor is twenty thousand kilometres away, but it has been done.

Method 1: Ring up your local branch of an international pizza chain and see if they honour their vouchers internationally. Pizza Hut do, which is how the entire Canberra Linux Users Group got to eat pizza one night, courtesy of someone in the US

Method 2: Ring up a local pizza shop in Canberra and quote a credit card number for a certain amount, and tell them that Andrew will be collecting it (don't forget to tell him.) One kind soul from Germany did this.

Method 3: Purchase a pizza voucher from your local pizza shop that has no international affiliations and send it to Andrew. It is completely useless but he can hang it on the wall next to the one he already has from Germany :-)

Method 4: Air freight him a pizza with your favourite regional flavours. It will probably get stuck in customs or torn apart by hungry sniffer dogs but it will have been a noble gesture.

Not only under Linux

[mirko]

I personnally use !SmbServer under RiscOS in order to efficiently share some files and printers with Linux and Windows machines.
I just find it amazing and it IMHO has become a true protocol, much beyond its original Linux/Windows filesharing scope.
Thanks !

Samba is cool,

[Make]

.. and the team really does great work. But, the SMB protocol is a moving target, we had to see that several times in the past. The Samba team has always managed to readapt to new protocol versions. Everyone who has worked with Windows' network Neighborhood knows that SMB is also a really really broken protocol which only works with much patience.
Wouldn't it be just better to invent a very new protocol, and provide clean clients for all major operating systems (Linux, BSD, windows 9x/NT, etc.). For Linux/Unix/BSD, something better than NFS is really required - NFS sucks (security? etc.)
I'm a bit thinking about efforts like Coda which is in the Linux kernel for years now, and there also exists a Windows client. Last time I checked there was no NT client which makes Coda practically useless at this stage.
But I think a clean, well designed, secure and stable protocol would be a benefit for big company's networks and for home networks. I work as developer, but I often help our admins. It's a network of w2k, NT4, Linux and FreeBSD machines (about 60 computers). The Windows machines always suck... in many cases because SMB doesn't work as it should.

Re:Samba is cool,

[Make]

Many people don't know it, but Windows is in fact modular ;)

The SMB protocol in Windows is just ONE driver.. you can integrate others as well, you "only" need to have deep knowledge of the internals of Windows (one thing I don't have). My point is, you don't need M$' cooperation for that. I guess if someone who really knows Windows writes a driver, it can be made work better than any reverse engineered SMB server emulation.

One problem with missing M$' cooperation is that it won't be shipped with Windows. Many admins don't even install service packs regularly - why should they be more motivated to install 3rd party drivers.. on all clients! It's just not automatically in there when Windows is freshly installed. Seems funny that this is a real problem, but mustn't be underestimated.

Re:Samba is cool,

[AnalogBoy]

In some organizations open source is considered taboo in some applications. Namely, those applications where there is a "Big name", albiet closed-source alternative with professional support, documented in an SLA or support agreement. Samba is not a product of RedHat, nor of HP. It is bundled software.

And 3rd parties digging through code.. Im not sure I really like that idea in my environment. No thanks, but i'll stick with companies who's stock prices are well into the double-digits. This isn't an HP Shop, nor is linux allowed in our production environment. Therefore, as i elaborate on below, I'm unconcerned with the principle.

[BEGIN Diatribe]
This discussion boils down to Administration Philosophies, Open Source Zealotism and professionalism on both sides. It trancends into the metaphysical layers of the OSI Model. Financial and Political for me, Religious for most of slashdot. To my contemporaries and myself, open source software simply isnt worth the "risk". Our investors don't like it, we're past the buzzword stage, and you know, in the end, our purpose is to make money, not to stand on philosophy. The one Linux application we ran was a unmitigated disaster. While I know it doesnt speak for all OpenSource applications, it certainly puts forth the idea that when you put something into production, you want to make sure it is completely, totally, and undeniably supported for its entire lifepsan. Unix/OSS is not a way of life for me. It isn't the godhead of my existence - its not my calling. Its my job. I do my job, I take appropriate steps to ensure I'm the best I can be at what I do, and then I go home and attempt to improve myself in other ways. I like Windows. I like Unix. I accept the benefits of both. My employers like that. This is the reason i've gotten the jobs i've gotten. [Well, it obviously wasn't my charming personality]

[END diatribe]

World's Shortest Samba HOW-TO

[hopeless case]

Back in July, I wrote a 3 paragraph SAMBA HOW-TO over on www.rootprompt.org here, shortly after being appalled at the quality of yet another article supposed to show you how to get started with SAMBA.

By the end of it, you can actually do something (gasp!) useful in some circumstances.

Here's the text

Samba how-to articles start off with how to write a configuration file so that your linux box can export a disk or print share that could be read by a windows client on the same network. I think this is a big mistake. The first thing you should show someone is the simplest possible command that acutaly makes something interesting happen. The time to explain the smb.conf file is when the next most interesting, complex experiment requires it, not before. There are a few very interesting and useful commands you can type that don't require that smb.conf even exists, let alone that the smbd and nmbd deamons are running.

Without further adieu, here is the simplest command:

smbclient -L server1 -U user%pass

If you type this command into a bash prompt on a linux box, it will attempt to contact the machine with netbios name 'server1' on your network and get a list of all the disk and print shares it is exporting to the windows network neighborhood. It will do so using the username 'user' and password 'pass'. If you, as I do, run linux on your office workstation on a lan with a bunch of machines running windows, this is the first thing you would want to do.

The next most interesting command looks like this:

smbclient //server1/share1 -U user%pass

This will attempt to connect you to the remote disk or print share 'share1' on the machine with netbios name 'server1'. If successful, you will be sitting at a command prompt at which you can use commands like cd, ls, get, and put, mkdir, rmdir, rm, ..., provided, of course, the username and password you used allow you such access to the remote share. If '//server/share1' is a print share, the command 'print file1' will send the local file 'file1' to the printer. If the printer is a postscript printer, you are in luck as most linux software prints to postscript files by default. If it is an ink jet printer, then you will need to use ghostscript to convert the postscript file to a file of the printer's format first, then send that file with smbclient.

Now go have fun, y'all

Golden Pizza Award

[ch-chuck]

...For best product enabling some semblance of competition in an office workplace environment, and for all their efforts going up against a very well funded vendor lock-in conspiracy. A great example of real software technology competition on it's own merits w/o the heavy reliance on marketing and legal manouvering.

Re:Don't forget mars_nwe - the NetWare emu

[sphealey]

Novell was great in it's day. I've watched it mature from the old DOS versions to the 5.x flavor.

That being said, integrating novell with a Windows NT network is a pain in the a$$. I currently support an application that runs on a Novell base(which in 3 weeks will be changed to a NT based network).

Kind of funny in three respects: (a) Netware was never a DOS program, although it has used DOS as a poor man's boot loader. Netware's distant ancestors in the family tree would be more like Wang and System/1, not Seattle DOS or its descendents. (b) that said, Novell did basically invent workable MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 networking, for which Microsoft should be eternally grateful (we all know how Bill repays debts, though) (c) it is funny how the Microsoft meme generator leads even knowledgable people to say that "Netware is not compatible", when based on history, technology, and market share over the last 20 years it is NT which is not compatible with Netware. Deliberately so, of course, as anyone who remembers the nightmare of MS-Office 97 Service Pack 2 can attest.

"Every mistake made with computers has been made three times: on mainframes, minis, and micros. Now we are building networks..."

sPh

BDC?

[lavaforge]

First off, kudos to the samba team for developing a product that works well and raises Microsoft's ire.

Does anyone know if future versions of Samba will be able to function as a backup domain controller in an NT4 domain? That right there would be a huge boon for companies that don't want to spend MS License costs, but need failover protection.

Unfortunately, I'm still a novice programmer, and that sort of thing is well above my abilities. Oh well, maybe one day.

...same as Japan validating American cars

[fireboy1919]

Samba works faster than Microsoft networking (there are tests showing this). I'll admit, Microsoft keeps pushing the envelope - releasing new stuff that barely works, and giving great new ideas to Samba's developers.

And as far as making standards, a lot of the new ideas for a browser come from MS. Are they bad ideas? I think not. MS does a lot of things very badly, but their internet browser is top notch - it works better, and encorporates a lot of interesting features not found in other browsers. If they'd release it under Linux, I'd have no good reason to dual boot.

2003 Challenges for SAMBA team

[hackus]

Unfortunately, the SAMBA team has a much bigger challenge on the horizon.

Microsoft is just biding thier time and waiting for the ultimate outcome of the Napster and other laws that forbid fair use, reverse engineering, etc.

My personal prediction for 2002-2003 year is that SAMBA will end up in the fryin pan with a letter from Microsoft's cronies/lawyers telling them they are in violation of and that they must cease operations immediately.

Same goes for a lot of other open source projects.

I think the Open Source community should preempt the money establishment and prepare for the day when projects and servers can distribute free software without being so centralized as they are today. (i.e. SourceForge).

I won't get into what I think the rammifications are should SourceForge ever becomes seriously compromised. (i.e. a new project Opens up and voila', the source code to Windows 2000 is downloadable....)

The past year has been the worst year of patents, MULA, EULA, RIAA and DMCA crap I have ever seen.

More shananigans no doubt will be the rule of thumb for 2003, but only this time, there won't be so much confusion, as recent ignorant courts have made some very very dangerous precedents.

Microsoft is just waiting for enough of them to accumulate before they hit the Open Source community with 2 Billion dollars funding a horde of lawyers that will forever do away with critical key software the OpenSource community relies on. (i.e. SAMBA, Linux Kernel, X-Windows, etc.)

It very well maybe that Europe will see the rebirth of Open Source as such crap doesn't go over very easily in Europe. (i.e. the ludicrous idea of software patents.)

Re:2003 Challenges for SAMBA team

[HeUnique]

Not so fast,

Yes, the samba people do reverse engineer lots of part in SMB, AD etc, but MS knows about it, MS got even a link to Samba on their web pages, and there is even a person (forgot his name) who works at Microsoft (they call him "our man at MS")...

Microsoft actually profiting from this move - sure, they'll loosing a bit on server selling if you use Linux as a PDC, but you still need NT/2K for BDC stuff, you're also using Exchange server which needs licenses (and connected to PDC/BDC), and the biggest part - those servers service the Windows workstations - which is the big revenue to MS...

So if MS wanted to sue the SAMBA people - they would have sued them long time ago (see how fast they sued Lindows for a small thing as the name)..

Re:Samba validates Microsoft

[infernalC]

I think Samba exists not for the validation of Microsoft but for the encouragement of interaction among heterogeneous systems.

Here are a couple of points to consider:

• Microsoft's LAN Manager and their later implementations of SMB were not the only commercial implementations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but DEC PathWorks is an SMB implementation still under development and distribution by Compaq on OpenVMS.
• Other proprietary file transfer protocols have been reverse-engineered and implemented in free software by other projects, including Novell and AppleTalk. Are the companies with the most popular implementations of the protocols also validated?

I think overriding effect of Samba and other free software projects that implement proprietary protocols is to make operating sytems that incorporate these implementations (originally GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, but now also several other UNIX variants) more attractive as newcomers to many previously entirely DEC or Microsoft shops, since they can interoperate seamlessly with legacy equipment. I would rather implement GNU/Linux with Samba in my datacenter than some proprietary OS that doesn't use Samba because I know Samba will be perpetually maintained and will always interoperate with any particular legacy system I am forced to use.

Having worked for a major life sciences company in a biochemistry research facility, I know the need for interoperability with legacy systems. For example, we had a number of instruments called BetaRams which we the biochemistry IT team had to support because they would be expensive to replace, yet the company that manufactured these no longer existed. The only software available for these systems was only certified to work on particular versions of IBM PC-DOS and MS-DOS. We had to be able to allow the software to write data to network drives, and all we could run was LAN Manager or Novell. We needed to store the data on fault-tolerant, near-perfect-availability systems. So, we used VMS with PathWorks (SMB) - this decision was made long before Samba.

Re:Don't forget mars_nwe - the NetWare emu

[markhb]

Actually, for a home network with a broadband Internet pipe, I would probably use NetBEUI for the SMB services, precisely because it is non-routable. It works fine on small nets, and the non-routability makes it much harder for unauthorized external users (i.e. crackers) to mount shares.

Cornerstone?

[Xunker]

"...becoming a cornerstone of the Linux community."

This counts as sort of amusing as Samba was originally written for Trigells' DEC system, and I doubt he even expected to ever get off his DEC, let along be ported to a dozen other systems and become one of the highest profile Free Software projects in use.

Re:Ah

[psamuels]

Take down a network without even trying. Gotta love that power.

Indeed, thanks to the design of NetBIOS and the MSRPC protocols for NT domains, it is quite easy to be a very disruptive influence on a network. And thanks to bugs in the NT implementation, misconfiguring Samba can actually take down NT machines! (Yes, that's a denial-of-service security hole. No, Microsoft doesn't care.) Of course, misconfiguring NT machines can take down NT machines as well - but NT's configuration isn't even close to as easy / flexible as Samba's....