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Samba Wins eWeek & PC Magazine Award
frankie_guasch writes: "The award is "Innovation in Infrastructure" (i3) award for best Enterprise Software!
And we beat out Sun Microsystems
Java 2 Platform Standard Edition Version 1.4 and Bea Systems WebLogic Server 7.0
for the award, so I'm stunned that we won. These guys have marketing departments
and a *budget.*" It's a strange contrast to the kind of attention that Samba is getting from Microsoft. (See these earlier posts for more on the CIFS situation.)
Samba rocks.
If only it wasn't so hard to configure shares... then again, maybe I'm just dumb, but it takes a lot of effort to set that stuff up.
fp
Anything that replaces NT/2000 at a reduced cost is great in my book. Just ask the guys I've been e-mailing about viruses.
The linked eWeek article only mentions that Samba's a finalist, and that the winners will be announced May 7. Since it's past that date, where's a link to the actual winners list? Not that I'm doubting that Samba could easily beat out the others, but I need to rub someone's nose in the fact that Samba won.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
they are easy to set up. I am not much of a linux guy, and I just used swat
I am pretty sure that if you have it installed you can (in a browser) go to http://localhost:901 (may be slightly different? did I get the port wrong?), and set it up
simple really, but j00 should remember to restart the samba server when you make changes to have them take effect
-z3r0_d
modularize Samba (it might be already, Ihave not looked) then make a module for supporting the CIFS and BSDL it. then add it to your GPL project.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
... Microsoft's gone out of its way to destroy something that was better than their offering.
I mean, come on. "The Lion King" was release what, seven years ago? Too bad The "Lion King II: Samba's Pride" went straight to video.
Hooray for the underdog!
Little black samba!
Huggeth a root today!
When I showed her the bill for hardware and software, I pointed out that the reason she now has a blazing fast server with great hardware, under budget, is that I opted not to install Windows 2000 Server.
"So how can my Windows 2000 laptop running QuickBooks connect so seamlessly and without any crashes ever" (ok ok i'm paraphrasing..) she inquired.
I proceeded to explain the magic of Samba, and the development model which made it possible....
Thanks for great software! : - )
Makes sense to me. Samba lets you use Windows and Linux, making each machine act like it's talking to a peer, instead of something else that's different to learn. That's one of the most useful things I can think of. It works very well on our network. This is from a users point of view, I know admins are a different story, but, admins are the minority anyway!
But seriously, if anyone ever says to you "well open source just copies the corporates" point to projects like the Linux virtual server project, or Tux, or Beowulf. Now Linux has achieved, then exceeded state of the art in the server arena, I wonder how soon it'll be before we see the same in the desktop market.
(It's a joke. Laugh.)
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
congrats team! it's a wonderful, and easy to use program (even for a non-computer guy like me)
/. effect, i have a feeling the last selection will win...
i noticed there's a poll on the same page about whether people will keep MS products, or go to open source wholesale... with the
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
well deserved.
1) Samba - Created to bypass MS braindead sharing, and to allow Linux to act as file servers, so HW and OS platform choice is irrelevant
2) Java - Created to make HW + OS Platform choice irrelevant
3) BEA, based on a standard approach to app servers that makes chosing the HW and OS a best fit decision.
Anyone spot the connection ? 3 Tools all made to bring together disparate environments.
But of course this sort of thing can't be done, you can't be modular, you can't be portable, you can't be flexible (Java comes in versions for Smart Cards, Phones, PDAs, PCs, Servers and Mainframes) I know that because the DOJ believe it.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I've got a teenie three-node network at home - two Windows computers and a Mandrake server. It's not much, but it gets me there. :)
Samba is absolutely the most important service running on the server. It lets my wife and I share files, print whenever we like, and maintain private backups off of our computers. I'd put it down as the single most useful software package for anyone who wants to run a home network. It's the one we use most often and most transparently. Well, that and Squid...
When Microsoft completely and irrevocably blocks out Samba, that's when Windows goes out the door forever. But seeing as how we haven't budged from 98SE since it came out, I don't know that's really going to be a problem.
Smaba team, you folks rock my weird little computing world. Well done, and totally deserved.
GMFTatsujin
Isn't it amazing that a ubiquitous software company's (MS) ill-designed (SMB), poorly implemented (NETBios) system for exposing resources to a network has become so pervasive and constricting that the IT industry starts giving _high_ _honors_ to an open-source product (Samba) that essentially embodies an acknowledgment that SMB will not evolve into something more sensible (NFS, for example) any time soon? So what should the authors say at the acceptance ceremony? "Thanks Microsoft. We couldn't have done it without you!"
we need to have a: Ask Bill Gates story.
This way he can start defending himself and his company from the attack of the clone nerds.
First question:
Why did you name it *Micro* *soft*?
I've recently started looking into setting up a domain at home based on Samba. However, to be of any use to me, it must be able to support domain trust relationships so that I can have seamless access to the domain at work (via a VPN).
Can anybody tell me, or point to resources that explain how to do this? As far as I can tell, the latest stable version of Samba doesn't support this. Does anybody know if it's even slated for the future, and preferably before NT4 gets moved to unsupported status by MSFT? I had a look at Samba TNG, but their docs aren't much help. Unfortunately, I don't have as much time as I would like to just download, install it on my Debian box, and experiment.
Come to think of it, maybe that's the way to spread the gospel of open source. Recognize good stuff and get slashdotted...
Believe nothing -- Buddha
Go Samba!
Though, I've had limited success with the new versions of samba and swat and all (for some reason I had no trouble figureing it out RH6.2 and RH7.2 through config files but my mdk 8.2 still doesn't work quite right) Even with that... SAMBA RULEZ B-)
Sigs pose an operational security risk and help the baddies aggregate data. I guess commenting does too, oops.
The Enterprise will learn what alot SMBs already know. Samba rocks as a drop in replacement for an NT file and print box.
In small offices all the users need to know is that they have a new domain password. And poof! NT is gone.
If you're admin in a small business or support/consult for multiple ones, sit down with the deci$ion maker and compare the virtues of *bsd/*nix running Samba to WinNT/2k with its licencing and security issues.
You WILL close the deal.
No wonder MS would like to see them go away.
the 'slide
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
Microsoft: klez Linux: Samba Microsoft: Codered Linux: Tux Microsoft: pirate windows cd's Linux: free linux iso's The choice is yours.
It's not such a crazy idea. OK, I know it sounds redundant, but it may be a way around security problems inherent in built-in Windows file sharing as well as promote compatibility with other Samba servers on the same segment or for standardization purposes. Is there a licensing workaround in there somewhere as well?
Given the CygWin environment, it should be at least *possible* to port it.
My company would love to replace their 2k server, which does only 1) share serving 2) ftp serving (smart enough not to use IIS thank god).
Anyone out there with experience in a business environment, using samba as a serious server? Opinions? Could it replace our 2K beast?
Wouldn't surprise me if they did, given how hostile they are against the good folks at Samba.
Both nautilus and konqueror already support this in Mandrake 8.2 if you enable users to be able to share their directories -
Do you want to allow users to export some directories in their home?
Allowing this will permit users to simply click on "Share" in konqueror and nautilus.
A stunning achievement!
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
This stuff infuriates me. The general public does not understand their peril simply because they do not understand the platform. However, if we translated what was unraveling in the technology world to a political platform, there would be massive outrage.
The GPL would be equivalent to freedom of speech, freedom of expression and the freedom to choose. Microsoft would be seen as a totalitarian government whose hopes an ambitions are to destroy the basic freedoms that you and I have come to know and love.
We need to educate the masses on this problem, this isn't just ours, its everyone who enjoys the freedom to choose, the freedom to express and the freedom to speak their opinions. Get this in the media, do a compare and contrast of Microsoft and a Totalitarian government. Being making Microsoft a symbol of singularism and a dictorship. This is going to far, Microsoft must be stopped.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Seen on comp.risks, please tell the guy what an idiot he is. Or if you happen to live nearby, you may try to give him a third meaning of killall, hehe...:
./configure script fails to
Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 14:52:30 -0500
From: dmaziuk@yola.bmrb.wisc.edu (Dimitri Maziuk)
Subject: GNU in Not Unix (Re: Markettos, RISKS-22.05)
Well, that particular risk is well known to professional Unix systems
administrators -- in fact, I was rather surprised to see that Linux
"killall" made the RISKS now: it's been [in]famous among Unix sysadmins for
quite a while now.
I see two issues here: one is that of false advertising, and another one --
of professionalism (not that they are entirely unrelated).
Stallman's rants about "LiGNUx" have a perfectly good technical reason
behind them: "Linux" (as in "OS based on Linux kernel and free software")
has lots of GNU software in it, and "GNU is Not Unix". Hence, Linux is
Not Unix, regardless of what Linux advocates may be telling us, it is
"GNU". (And, BTW, Unix is Not GNU.)
That was about false advertising, now let's look at professionalism.
Linux killall is perfect illustration of what happens when a product is
designed by a diletante.
Back in 1975 professionals designed an OS called Unix. Being professionals,
they realised the need for certain design principles. Such as splitting a
task into a number of smaller subtasks and designing a separate tool to
handle each subtask (that does one thing, and does it well)[0].
For example, shutting down a computer involves flushing (synchronizing) file
buffers to disk ("sync"), killing all running processes ("killall"), and
powering off the machine ("poweroff", at least on Solaris). All perfectly
neat and logical.
Along comes a layman who is unaware of the above principle, nor of
the significant "prior art"[1]. Result? -- read Theo's message.
(Various observations to show that isn't such a big problem (in
no particular order):
* professionals already know that similarly-named utilities often
behave differently on different operating systems,
* GNU folks never intended to uphold the aforementioned design
principle in the first place (see EMACS), so no surprises there,
after all, you'll only run "killall" on a Unix once.)
We have a bigger problem with another Unix principle: source code
portability.
As software becomes more complex, it requires more sophisticated build
tools. More and more open source software is being developed using GNU
compilers and build tools, and it is becoming dependant on them. The result?
-- While portability at the level of each compilation unit is still
maintained, the whole thing is not portable anymore. It fails to build on
non-GNU systems[2].
GNU project in particular did a great service to software community by
promoting and popularizing free software. It also did a great disservice by
turning the whole thing into a political issue, and pretty much ignoring the
need for competence and expertise on the part of software developers.
Instead of sound software engineering, we now have "Free Speech"
flag-waving[3].
With more companies (individuals, governments) jumping on Linux bandwagon,
the situation becomes eerily reminiscent of the recent dot-com boom; back
then we had The Internet and e-words, now we have Open Source and
Linux. Back then a few cautionary voices drowned in marketing hype, now
they're likely to be branded Paid Advocates of Evil Entertainment Industry
and Oppressors of Free Speech[tm] -- so they shut up and go learn Plan9, or
something.
(BTW, if it sounds like I'm singling GNU out, I'm not. Microsoft
et al., did at least as much as GNU to get us where we are now.
The whole thing would be very different if there was e.g. a
liability clause in every software license.)
But the $15 question remains: would you board an airplane designed by, say,
2nd year biology student as a night-time hobby? So what makes you think
their software design skills are any better?
Hmm. This came out sounding like a rant. Well, it probably is.
Dima
[0] Various aspects of the problems related to complex software systems are
very familiar to RISKS readers. They come up in, what? -- every other RISKS
issue? 25+ years ago Unix authors were well aware of them, too.
[1] Irix and Solaris "killall", for examle, behave like HP-UX one -- not
surprising, considering the "grand scheme of things" outlined above.
[2] Anyone who ever tried building open source software on Solaris using
native build tools knows that 9 times out 10 GNU "libtool" fails to link
shared libraries. The remaining 1 time GNU
determine compiler flags to make position-independent code (needed for said
libraries). And since GNU compiler and build tools are unable to produce
64-bit code on Solaris, the libraries, and all software that uses them must
be built as 32-bit binaries. Now, why did I pay for that 64-bit hardware,
again?
[3] And instead of one Shakespeare, we have a zillion monkeys with C
compilers. As history of Usenet shows, we shouldn't expect them to come up
with even "Hello World" anytime soon, not to mention "Hamlet".
...for SWAT to come with an SSL option (like webmin does), instead of wrapping with stunnel.
that deloreans are the CLIT commander. You should buy me one.
My understanding was that it was a spec, not software itself. Am I wrong? Or was this Sun's implementation (software) of the J2EE spec?
creation science book
I wonder if MS will continue to use the leverage of DMCA to ensure SAMBA's demise. A great product is about to meet the MS giant if the DOJ settles like it appears it wants to.
Great job folks. I hope we get to see new releases for years to come and I do not mean to rain on your parade. Instead I wish to remind everyone what is at stake in this.
What's really interesting is, that Samba allows Unix to serve as file servers. Why is that so popular? Why not just use a Win2K server? My best bet is stability, this means that people who realize this, also realize that Wintendo just doesn't cut the mustard in the server market. This also puts things into perspective when chosing workstation OS'es.. I hope.
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
Microsoft's File-Share Rule Makes Waves
Yay..?
The award nomination is great for the Samba team, congrats! The more important question to this story is about Microsoft's intensified attacks on Samba and whether Samba will be able to continue in the future. From the article:
"In late March, Microsoft published a document that outlines how third-party developers can use Common Internet File Sharing (CIFS) [...]
Specifically, Microsoft requires programmers to sign an agreement that prohibits using information in the document when building software governed by the General Public License (GPL). Among the products affected by the restriction is Samba, widely used software that competes with file sharing technology in Microsoft's Windows operating system. Samba uses CIFS to communicate with client systems."
With this and other such inevitable moves by MS on the horizon, will Samba be able to continue meaningfully with an increasingly hostile Microsoft?
This would be an interesting approach, except that the documentation license terms appear to specifically prohibit any "free" implementations.
Here is the relevant section:
1.4 "IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that requires in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; (b) be licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be redistributable at no charge.
Notice that the above applies to "other software" distributed with software subject to the (supposed) "IPR Impairing License". In other words, if your product is open source, you can't use Microsoft's docs to build it, and they are not granting the specified patent licenses.
Allison and the SAMBA team are taking the only safe approach, which is to claim that these docs are not used to build their implementation, and that their implementation is done in such a way as not to infringe on the patents.
In the mean time, we can all hope this comes back to bite MS in the antitrust proceedings. As I see it, clearly they are acting in bad faith with this first step towards a "remedy".
Many of those things end up on EBay... hey wait a minute... there is profit in GPL.
It is worth pointing out here that, as mentioned in the linked yahoo story (also appeaing in news.com), Microsoft's corporate vice president in charge of the innards of Windows, Rob Short, has been questioned over the CIFS license issue by the states' lawyers. It is interesting to see what kind of impact will the anti-GPL CIFS license have in the outcome of the trial.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Check out the other Samba Awards
But J2RE is mad bloated. My 1.2/768 RAM runs at a crawl when I tried to play a graphical based Java RPG (as seen on /. btw) which means it'll be Jikes or the likes for me, hopefully that'll fix it. Cross platorm is nice, but only if you can run it with any sort of speed.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Because it's *been* ported to Win32. Point your browser to:
http://main.mswinxp.net/~lpackham/smbclient/
Unfortunately, the site seems to be down at the moment . . . here's the Google cache. The package is also mentioned at the Cygwin Contributed Packages Page.
How do I know all this? I asked the same question last week. Thanks to ashpool7 for answering *my* question. Heh.
I was with you until you called that piece of crap "sensible". Yes, SMB sucks even worse than NFS, (though not as much as PCNFS) but NFS shares many of the same design weaknesses - although NFS clearly beats SMB for speed.
And of course, the HP-UX "patch-a-day" version of NFS is probably the worst implementation ever, but HP-UX is a horror show anyway.
After you spend a year or two with Coda or Andrew you can make a more informed decision about what's "sensible".
--Charlie
That was an excellent post, sir! Please keep up the good work. I would like to see more images like the one posted.
I must congratulate all of the trolls on the fine work they are doing. I respect you all very much!
Thank you and have an excellent day!
Love Cindy
I expect [Quickbooks] to write [the data] to [a] file and not trash the [data if the files] unexpectedly go away.
Like this?
E325: ATTENTION
Found a swap file by the name ".taxes.qbk.swp"
owned by: miallen dated: Thu May 9 19:06:10 2002
file name: ~miallen/taxes.qbk
modified: no
user name: miallen host name: CRAPPYWS
process ID: 65534
While opening file "taxes.qbk"
(1) The Windows file server crashed.
If this is the case, be careful not
to by Windows servers in the future.
Quit, or continue with caution.
(2) Quickbooks friggn' crashed (again *sigh*).
If this is the case, use "file > recover"
or "quickbooks -r taxes.qbk"
to recover the changes (seek help about
recovery on the Internet or something).
If you did this already, try again. If that
didn't work try upgrading to the latest
service pack. If still no luck try to reboot.
If that still doesn't work, delete the swap
file ".taxes.qbk.swp" to avoid this message.
"taxes.qbk" [New File]
Hit ENTER or type command to continue
From MS license:
"IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that requires in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; (b) be licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be redistributable at no charge.
Solution:
"This software is licensed under the terms of either (a) GNU Public License or (b) BSD License. It is your choice as to which, but to choose option (b) you must also pay a fee of $1gazillion to FSF."
Astonishing, really, the lengths to which Microsoft seems to go sometimes to piss on their own shoes. Here, they demonstrate by their hamfisted tactics how great is their disdain for the rest of computerdom. It's to ponder: Does no one in their executive boardroom consider that, in shoving Open Source developers more fully away from having anything to do with Microsoft, they're increasing the likelhood of their own eventual irrelevance?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Linux Bad, FreeBSD Good.