The Official Samba 3 HOWTO and Reference Guide

Matt Will writes "The Official Samba 3 How-To and Reference Guide was written by John H. Terpstra and Jelmer Rinze Vernooij in collaboration with the core developers of the Samba-Team (www.samba.org) and expert end users. The book is written with special focus towards administrators of Microsoft Windows systems, giving them a first insight into the capabilities of Samba and a well guided step-by-step guide for migrating systems from a Microsoft solution to Samba." Read on for the rest of Will's review. The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide author John H. Terpstra, Jelmer R. Vernooij pages 736 publisher Prentice Hall rating 9 reviewer Matt Will ISBN 0131453556 summary Good summary of setting up, using, and troubleshooting Samba 3

The book itself For people with little time, the book starts with the chapter "FastStart: Cure for the Impatient," which features many example configurations of working solutions, each illustrating working setups using Samba to different ends -- as a file and print server, CD-ROM server, etc.

In the following chapters, the How-To and Reference Guide deals with all aspects of server and security modes, domain control and backup domain control and stand-alone configurations. Each of the chapters include further example configurations as well as in-depth discussion of the chapter's topic, and a "common errors" section that answers the most obvious real life errors.

In the third part of the book (Advanced Configuration) the reader is presented with detailed information on the topics of network browsing, account information databases, and group mapping from MS Windows to the Unix world, as well as file, directory and share access controls and file and record locking. There is also a second chapter about security in this part of the book.
Still in the third part, the book explains the new features of Samba 3.0.0, for instance interdomain trust relationships and distributed file systems.

Two very thorough chapters explain the conventional printing support with Samba, as well as printing via the newer print system CUPS. Following short chapters about winbind and network management, the Guide explains how to set up and maintain system and account policies, and how to exercise desktop profile management, and provides short but informative chapters about PAM authentication, Windows/Samba network integration, character sets, and some words about backups and high availability.

Part 4 of the Samba How-To Guide deals exclusively with updating and migrating from Samba 2.x to Samba 3.0.0, including an example migration from a NT4 PDC to a Samba-3 PDC and a user guide to the SWAT (graphical interface for configuring Samba) tool.

In part 5 (Troubleshooting) the reader is given a very good checklist to verify all functions of the Samba installation are working correctly and a guide how to analyze and solve problems with Samba.

In the appendices, the book gives information on how to obtain and compile Samba, lists supported platforms, gives hints for performance tuning, dhcp and dns, and includes the man pages to the Samba programs and configuration files.

Primary audience The book is written for people in the "Windows world" who want to take a look into the services and possibilities Samba offers for them. Beginners get very detailed information which things are possible with Samba and which are not (for now), as well as the necessary background for installing and configuring Samba on a Unix/Linux system. For the advanced user, there are still some diamonds of new information and also a good reference for all the new settings and options in the new Samba release. Personal Rating I can recommend this book to everyone interested in Samba - especially the new 3.0 version - no matter if you are new to Samba or even an experienced user of the software who is interested in expanding your knowledge and trying new features. It has its place on my bookshelf of very useful documentation.

You can purchase The Official Samba 3 HOWTO and Reference Guide from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Pizza?

[SharpFang]

Do they include more info on delivering Pizza to Samba authors?

How does it compare to the online docs?

[ErikTheRed]

I seriously considered purchasing this book the other day, however, I paused because its contents sound so similar to what you download with the product for free. If there are better explanations, information, etc., I would love to acquire it. Does anyone familiar with both have any comments?

For those unable to buy it....

[geoff313]

While it is an excellent idea to financially support the Samba project, not only because of what they are doing but for how well they do it, but for those who are looking for who can't afford this book essentially the same document can be found here. Keep in mind this was the pre-release version of the published book. And I would just like to say thanks to the Samba team for all the excellent work they have done!!!

Re:A hidden cost of open source?

[ShaggyZet]

Yeah, Windows Help files include everything you could ever need. Most of the Windows developers and administrators I know have completely empty bookshelves in their offices. And I can't remember the last time I was in a bookstore that had a section on Windows Foo or Visual Bar++.

Now come off it. Books are useful when they are more in depth than what is included with the software. MSDN (if that's what you're refering too) is good, but it's not the be all and end all of Windows Programming documentation. I'm not familiar enough with the Windows Admin side to know if there is even an equivelent.

From a programming perspective, I generally find simple man pages to be much more in depth and up to date than MSDN or any other windows help files. And the many HOWTOs from LDP go even further.

Need more of the same

[Ridgelift]

The book is written for people in the "Windows world" who want to take a look into the services and possibilities Samba offers for them.

We need more books that help Windows users make the change to Linux. Although I probably wouldn't benefit from this book since I'm now used to reading the documentation myself, I would have appreciated such a text a few short years ago.

Making the transition from Windows to Linux can be a lot like learning to ski. Windows is all about bunny hills, where you can learn to snow plow quickly and initially have some fun, but it gets boring fast. Linux, on the other hand, is like a full mountain without proper directions. Some people start with Linux and find the green runs and have fun. Others end up beginning on a double diamond run, and hate it because it was such a harrowing and confusing experience.

Books like these help those bunny hill Windows users find the Linux green runs, and help them advance to the blue and black diamond aspects of Linux at a controlled pace.

One word...

[cnelzie]

CALs.

Extra words follow...

For our small corporate network, I have determined that it would cost us nearly $40,000 USD (Just for the Software!) to maintain a Primary and Back-up Domain Controller using Microsoft Windows 2000. This includes both the Main Server License costs and the multiple packs of CALs required to allow each user access to the servers.

Instead of that, we went with a Linux/Samba solution using the same hardware and saved... $40,000 in licensing costs. Sure, it took me a little longer to setup in the first place, of course my pay rate isn't even high enough to consider an issue in regards to choosing between Linux/Samba or Windows 2000 for our domain.

From my reading, I can double and even triple the number of users with the current Samba system and see no additional license costs for CALs (or the time to calculate how many CALs we would need) or the need for upgrading the hardware.

Re:One word...

[FatherOfONe]

I disagree, we have a similar company and are based out of Indiana and I put out a job listing and had so many qualified resume's the next day I couldn't go through them all in a week. I began to wonder if they handed out MCSE's at Walmart. :-) I can find Linux guys who know windows and windows guys who are not so biased that they can learn SAMBA in way less than a week. I don't know how much you pay, but around here there is NO cost difference between an MCSE and a Linux/Windows guy.

Again I have setup SAMBA now for quite a few organizations around town and have NEVER had an issue.

When you mention that it is not configured for a corporate environment, I would disagree. I was part of a LAN team that worked on a 50k+ NT network and we used SAMBA a ton on our SUN boxes and it worked well. We had FAR FAR FAR FAR more problems with WINS on our Windows boxes than we EVER did with our SAMBA solutions.

I want to make one point clear. Once the software is installed it runs. For 99% of the companies out there it never needs to be touched again (unless you want to). You would not need to spend 2-3 hours a week for every new project that comes up. I know because I run it. I have ran it and will continue to run it. I have ran it in 50k+ mixed networks and 5 user church networks.

It's funny you mention UNIX and Oracle people looking for jobs, on our job posting we looked for exactly that and we got around 35% MCSE's and Microsoft Access guys. I was thinking the same thing but in reverse, :-) :-) (Mabe we should switch roles). I personally don't care if a developer,LAN Guy,DBA etc, doesn't know our specific technology. I look more for what they have shown on the job, and their ability to learn new stuff. I feel for all those poor saps that thought they would have a job forever doing Visual Basic, only to have Microsoft pull the plug on them. The good ones will show that they can learn something else. (I would suggest JAVA).... but that is me :-)

It is the online doc

[Bruce Perens]

As good citizens of the Open Source developer community, the authors and editiors in Bruce Perens' Open Source Series place the text of their books under Open Source licenses. We think that Open Source software deserves Open Source documentation. As a result, you can already get all but 5 chapters of this book online from the Samba project, and the remaining 5 will eventually be there too. Most people buy paper because it's hard to curl up with an e-book. That seems to be working for this title, we are already in the second printing. But if you want to read it online, you are welcome to.

Thanks

Bruce