Samba: Less Important Because Windows Is Less Important

Jeremy Allison - Sam writes "Interview Bruce Byfield did with me after the Samba 4.0 release. Discusses interactions with Microsoft, the future of the code and project, and many other things."

Comments

First posting?

[GameboyRMH]

Still important :-P

Re:First posting?

[aoteoroa]

Samba is absolutely still important. We just take SAMBA for granted now more than ever because it is pre-installed everywhere in almost every appliance. For example buy a $20 internet 'router' from Best Buy that can share a connected USB drive over a LAN and it probably uses SAMBA for functionality.

Re:First posting?

[GameboyRMH]

I use Samba at home for my media file shares, and probably still would have even if Windows interoperability wasn't an issue, it's widely supported by most non-Windows OSes (except iOS, the first OS where you need to pay to add on a Samba client. Progress!)

Re:First posting?

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

And it still probably won't come with an offer for source code (sigh :-).

Jeremy.

Re:First posting?

[icebike]

Samba is absolutely still important. We just take SAMBA for granted now more than ever because it is pre-installed everywhere in almost every appliance. For example buy a $20 internet 'router' from Best Buy that can share a connected USB drive over a LAN and it probably uses SAMBA for functionality.

Agreed.

Samba is not seen as a big issue these days because it works so incredibly well. Software only gets your attention when it fails.

As for Windows not being as important, that simply is not the case in corporate america. In fact the only reason Linux exists in the corporate world is because of Samba. Any growth if Linux in the server or workstation role is due principally to Samba, and without it there would be virtually zero Linux adaptation in the workplace. Businesses are natural mono-cultures when it comes to computing systems.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider Samba the first option to share any file between any two machines on the same network, regardless of platform. Primarily because (almost) every platform supports it, and secondly because it is both easy to set up for quickly sharing something, and powerful to accommodate teams.

Re:First posting?

[Charliemopps]

You say this while I've got a power point presentation open about our new "lets put everyone on Virtual machines and have them remote in via linux terminals!" Something I never thought I'd see. It's not going to happen tomorrow but we're never going to Windows 8 or above. That's relatively clear. Microsoft nailed their own coffin shut.

Re:First posting?

[h4rr4r]

So you have never heard of webservers?
DNS? NTP? FTP?

All of those are commonly run on Linux. Businesses are not natural mono-cultures. Lots of businesses use many different computing systems and it has been that way since there were computing systems.

Re:First posting?

[ArsonSmith]

Strange, nearly 20 years and 10 companies as a Linux admin and Samba has always been a slight afterthought, rarely used. I always figured if it wasn't for exchange windows wouldn't even exist in the corporate world any more.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true at all. Actually, the reason Linux exists is because of web and database servers. File serving came in because of the door opened by the previous two.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for all your hard work!

I once dreamed, as you, that Windows would not be important anymore, and then Samba would become less important. Now I dream that samba will slowly be integrated into corporate cloud sharing services, something like Dropbox + database service, or the upcoming Octopus from VMWare. I hope Samba, or maybe rather Samba with some add-on will lead the way. (The database service so coworkers can store shared business data for merge jobs in LibreOffice, etc.)

Re:First posting?

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

No, you're getting the history the wrong way around.

Samba was started in '92. The web wasn't on most companies radar until the late 90's.

Web and database on Linux came in the door opened by file servers :-).

Our original platform was SunOS (not even Solaris). When Samba started Linux was a toy, it didn't even have networking.

Jeremy.

Re:First posting?

[tibit]

It's also easier to set up than nfs4+kerberos!

Re:First posting?

[icebike]

Not true at all. Actually, the reason Linux exists is because of web and database servers. File serving came in because of the door opened by the previous two.

Your sense of history is sort of warped.
The vast majority of businesses with in-house web servers probably stated with Microsoft web servers, and were forced to abandon that idea when growth (and insecurity) made it no longer tenable. Same for Database servers.

But to complete your education, walk into any modern office, and count the number of Linux desktops.

Re:First posting?

[icebike]

FLASH: Man with Linux colored classes sees only Linux machines.
Film at 11.

Re:First posting?

[poetmatt]

If you think Linux exists because of Samba, I'd like to remind you of a company called Oracle. They are the most important in corporate america. Windows doesn't mean shit in the big picture.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Overrated for karma whoring on the first post.

Re:First posting?

[icebike]

I suggest you look at the link I posted. I think you will find you are utterly and hopelessly misinformed.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is something we're seriously testing (700+ desktops): PCs run linux (probably ubuntu) with the actual work on VMs they remote to.
Super low costs, eliminate most worries about virus/security, easy to manage... it's turning into a serious project.

Slightly off topic but.. after all the bitching about Unity, Microsoft has shown us there are worse ways to do a desktop. We're definitely not going to w8 across the company.

Re:First posting?

[jedidiah]

Once you get into bigger problems and more demanding SLAs, the prevalance of Windows declines rather quickly.

Re:First posting?

[shaitand]

I'm sorry but you simply don't speak for what is the case in corporate america. The only place you see windows or samba needing to replace it is on desktops, file and print servers and often authentication ties (so as to support single sign-on) and exchange. In most of those cases it is only used because it easy and popular. And thanks to Samba 4 you could drop windows from all of that but exchange and the desktops. At the end of the day the main reason you use windows/samba for print/auth is that you already have it for your desktop+outlook combo.

This all represents a very small part of the corporate server world. You aren't going to find windows boxes serving webpages or anywhere in the data center. Most applications (especially the internal apps that drive a workplace) are going to be running on Linux and served up through a web interface.

Perhaps it is just me. When you say 'corporate america' my mind goes to at least Fortune 1000. I suppose technically you could include all the small businesses that don't really have an infrastructure beyond desktop/file/print/exchange but are legally structured as a s or c corp.

Re:First posting?

[shaitand]

Yup outlook/exchange. I've never understood what is so great a technical challenge in developing open solutions that replace these well but when something pops up it seems to focus on only one piece of this or it provides calendar and email but as separate pieces within the suite and not tying and integrating all the pieces together the way exchange does.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeremy, why do you have a photo of John Malkovich (with hair) in your profile?

Re:First posting?

[shaitand]

Jeremy I have no doubt you know when Samba was started but started and widely adopted are two different things.

I certainly saw no sign of serious samba deployment until after serious Linux deployment and in most organization that was after the Linux boxes were first deployed (at least deployments that stuck) in roles that were previously owned by UNIX such as web/ftp/dns and for a while email but exchange ended up winning email. It wasn't until after a company already had Linux working and proven as a reliable source of a cheap dust collector that just works before they would risk more directly desktop interfacing tasks to it like file/print and auth.

Re:First posting?

[Anne Thwacks]

That is not even slightly likely.

"Servers" meant Unix machines for about 10 years before Windows had networking capability. Oracle reached version 5 on Unix before it was ported to DOS (Oracle 5 for DOS never really worked anyway).

Re:First posting?

[mmell]

Who modded this down? Somebody mod this back up. The post was on-topic, succinct and to the point.

Re:First posting?

[RCL]

walk into any modern office, and count the number of Linux desktops

I'm interested in your estimate. I think it is 0 or close to 0, but I work in a specific industry (gamedev) and can have MS bias.

Re:First posting?

[buchner.johannes]

It doesn't have to, it is GPLv3, not v2. Unless they modified it. see here if you don't believe me

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exchange historically was a total heap of shit. The main thing that drove adoption was that business people liked the Outlook client. About the only advantage to Exchange was the shared directory (pre-LDAP), and that it meant one less vendor.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see nothing in your link that says they don't have to provide an offer for the source as well. In fact, I see the opposite.

Re:First posting?

[bakes]

Yeah. Historically.

Re:First posting?

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

No, I also know when it was first widely adopted. I was around and shepherded it through that remember. It really took off around 1994 when we had very wide use on SunOS and early Solaris use.

Wider Linux use really didn't start until about until 1996 or so. I remember tridge and I being amazed that making it work on Linux became more important than making it work on SunOS/Solaris/HPUX and other commercial UNIXes.

Jeremy.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

this is simply not true. Samba is great, but most companies still use windows for file sharing, both the client and server side. And there are many, many uses for Linux in the corporate world that have nothing to do with samba.

Re:First posting?

[kenh]

Most applications (especially the internal apps that drive a workplace) are going to be running on Linux and served up through a web interface.

Put down the crack pipe, it's warping your mind.

Corporate America runs on Windows desktops and laptops, and the vast majority of servers on the WAN are Windows. Webservers and other public-facing servers are a hodge-podge of various OS.

The proof would be in the job postings on sites like dice.com, monster.com, etc. - I invite you to compare the number of Windows admin and programming opportunities vs. Linux...

Re:First posting?

[Techman83]

There are great alternatives for Groupware. However people don't actually want exchange, they want outlook. It's a tool they are familiar with and have built up years of workflow around it. It's horrible, unstable, ugly, but people cling to it. It's a safety blanket.

I reckon the current version of Zimbra is looking to be quite a suitable replacement and it's built using OSS products. There are paid for enterprise versions, which get you things like ActiveSync (presumably they have to pay MS for a license to use that), but it's pocket change compared to a full blown exchange implementation. The administration has a decent easy to use CLI and the web admin side of things is really comprehensive. No more pulling up emc to do one bit, then powerhell, then webmail and finally the last bit in Outlook.

Moving back on topic, Samba 4 should mean that things that absolutely have to talk LDAP in MS's broken way will mean absolutely no need for a windows box on your network

Re:First posting?

[shaitand]

I'm sure you'd know better than my anecdotal experience.

In my world Novell Netware ran this space until post NT 4 and NT 4 wasn't released until 1996. By the time we were seeing and recommending Linux/Samba combinations as replacements Linux had already established itself running web boxes. But then I wasn't working in the enterprise back then. Most of the companies we did work for had under 50 seats.

Very interesting stuff. I didn't know about Samba's history on commercial UNIX. But that's all ancient history anyway.

Over the years I have to say I've found Samba to be my tool of choice in many roles and it is an absolutely indispensable part of my toolkit. I haven't had a chance to put Samba 4 through the paces yet but some of the new capabilities suggest that I might be able to eliminate windows entirely from the piece of network I'm working in now. So thank you Jeremy for your role in all of that!

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you get into bigger problems and more demanding SLAs, the prevalance of Linux declines rather quickly.

FIFY

Re:First posting?

[shaitand]

"The proof would be in the job postings on sites like"

That isn't proof of anything. You need 3 or 4 windows admins for every Linux admin required to administer the same number of systems. There is also far more turn-over in windows spots. Many organizations call the guys who work on those windows desktops and laptops admins as well. That and because some types of organizations require lots and lots of local offices and those organizations often are forced to deploy a windows server at each of those locations, not because they need that many servers or windows has expanded into another server space but because the protocols involved weren't properly designed and perform poorly over the wan and good wan accelerators are both tough to find and the ones that are worth a damn are expensive.

There are millions of small companies asking for little .net apps and the like but you aren't likely to find that in many enterprises. In the enterprise you are going to have something served up through a web interface or java based or java served up through a web interface and the backend certainly isn't going to be windows. If you are using windows on your database servers, web servers, archival systems, or virtualization boxes it is you who is smoking the crack pipe my friend.

The one notable exception that is picking up quite a bit of steam is Sharepoint. Hopefully we'll see that go away but in the meantime it's a VM and the actual server underneath it isn't windows and box the data is stored on, also isn't windows.

Re:First posting?

[shaitand]

You are forgetting the shared calendar/tasks and their tight email integration. The idea that giving people a calendar or a directory based addresses gave them an exchange/outlook alternative is the reason most of the alternatives aren't viable.

Re:First posting?

[shaitand]

Exchange is currently a piece of shit too. There just isn't a non piece of shit alternative. If you just needed email and a directory there are much better less bloated and more efficient solutions but alas you don't just just need a directory and a mail server.

Re:First posting?

[CAIMLAS]

Yeah, except Samba 4 is less important than Samba 3.

Samba is/was useful because it interfaces many different systems together, providing file and print services based on those other systems.

Samba 4 doesn't do this. It is those "other systems" - it's the whole ball of wax, and you have no option to not make it be your DNS or authentication backend. This is almost entirely useless for eg. people using other systems for authentication as their backend (LDAP) already who do not want to make Samba 4, a stack which is yet untested by time and lacks a lot of the necessary documentation for 'production' systems, their single point of failure.

If samba 4 had come along in 2003 or 2004, this would be another story. There was a lower standard set for "production" then, and Windows has improved markedly as a server platform since. As it stands, it's nowhere near ready - so there's no place for it.

Re:First posting?

[infinitelink]

Just don't forget the small businesses: it's not that people are idiots (though they are: I mean it as a statement of reality, not an insult) who don't want to learn or resist (though they do), it's that the small-to-mid are often pressed for time: I know a guy who is worried about taking extra seconds per transaction in the day to save hours at the end of the week when he has to do all his books over one day: if he took extra seconds by snapping a photo of estimates, invoices, etc., to send so I can do the paperwork immediately (or at the end of each day), it will literally save him a whole day: but per-day that's costly time, a bit like the business that can save money by buying bulk or something more expensive and saving money or time (by having higher quality to be more productive), but having cash-flow problems that prevent it: real constraints by various factors that make something that's great in aggregate perhaps a non-options in the particulars required. : (

All that is said to illustrate this: many businesses out there have people, whether the biz is big or small, who are desperate each day for time, and can use what they already know very effectively, but not something else: besides Windows, this means MS Office, Quickbooks, [insert some random piece of industry-standard software that only runs on Windows here]: a great deal of things out there are idiotic and can build-software-for-a-certain-platform only, software that is great perhaps in what it does, and which isn't being replaced any time soon because it's what people are used to. I used to hear how "if only Office and Quickbooks ran on Linux, people could ditch Windows: I've learned these days it isn't so simple.

There's also that cash-flow issue to consider: re-training would be worth it later, but destroy the business interrim. : (

Re:First posting?

[mvdwege]

No it's not. If you want the full functionality of NFS4+Kerberos, you need to set up your Samba server as a full Domain Member server in an Active Directory domain, which is quite a task in itself.

Re:First posting?

[squiggleslash]

It's one of those "Too many competing, bad, standards" things combined with a lack of understanding, in my experience, by too many Linux people about why Exchange, and moreover the overall Windows infrastructure, supports the features it does.

It seems to me to be ironic that the things certain "GNU/Linux should work like Windows!" advocates set out to copy were the least important, and arguably the worst examples: the insistence on a bloated application development framework for GNOME and GNOME 1's attempt to be a Windows 95 clone (with giant icons!) merely created a crippled user experience. Meanwhile the good decisions Microsoft made - Active Directory, a fully working groupware suite, etc - were ignored because even the Miguels in the FOSS community didn't grok them.

Kudos to the SAMBA team for getting AD working. I don't think we necessarily needed it, except for Windows integration (any standardized combination of Kerberos and LDAP would do) but it'll make it easier to persuade the FOSS community to start taking that aspect of things seriously. What I hope is that we'll start to see real improvements on the groupware side too. As it is, unless you want to do everything yourself, managing your own email server and an entirely separate calendar thing, and an entirely separate contacts thing, etc (guys, you know IMAP can store pretty much anything, right?), and don't care about interoperability, we still seem to be stuck in the stone age.

Re:First posting?

[unixisc]

Samba is GPL3 - the reason that Apple no longer uses it. How can its source code not be available w/o license violation?

Re:First posting?

[Danathar]

It works well when it's Windows to Windows or Windows to a stable version of SAMBA that is fairly modern.

It's flakey between mixed hosts of Mac, Windows and Linux systems (like media servers) that are on different versions SAMBA.

Re:First posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you know, the guy you're replying to heads up the Samba team.
He's somewhat knowledgeable on the subject. ;)

Re:First posting?

[Grishnakh]

You just answered your own question.

Re:First posting?

[hobarrera]

Because a one-protocol-for-everything is an awful philosophy. It means that you can't change parts you don't like, or replace individual servers - since it's only own monolithic piece.
Sure, it's easier for the end user - but that's just a matter of creating better clients with better support for autoconfiguration (for which standards exist).

Re:First posting?

[tibit]

What I meant was that if all you want is file sharing between Linux machines, using smbfs and samba is easier than nfs4+kerberos.

Re:First posting?

[mvdwege]

If you want the same level of authentication, then no, it is not easier.

And if you don't care about authentication, then you can run nfs4 without kerberos, which is not harder than deploying samba without authentication.

Re:First posting?

[tibit]

Same level of authentication? I thought NTLMv2 is pretty darn good. The only thing you lose by not using Kerberos is single sign-on, I'd think.

Comedy silver

[Anonymous Coward]

Earlier today I read a man complaining to Slashdot that Linux only has two data sharing options "off" and "configure 400 settings." He was answerred with a post of "just use Samba."

And then, this.

Re:Comedy silver

[robmv]

As the person who wrote that comment, I see no contradiction here. Samba 4.0 is needed because it updates everything adding Active Directory protocols. If for some reason all Windows system die tomorrow, Samba 4.0 is less important because the main use of it is Windows interoperability, actual samba is pretty useful for basic file sharing, and if you remove one of the uses of it to something, it become less important. Samba AD integration is not used for Linux system, it is just for Windows clients.

A project to follow for equivalent functionality of AD for pure Linux system is FreeIPA (still a lot of development ahead but the architecture is good)

Re:Comedy silver

[Lashat]

AD inegration is important for small, medium, and large businesses if you want to connectivity to be "out of the box" easy.

Re:Comedy silver

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Hahahah ! Actually, that's comedy *gold*.

man smb.conf :-).

Re:Comedy silver

[icebike]

If for some reason all Windows system die tomorrow,

Other than that 800 pound gorilla in the room, there is nobody else around....

Hand waiving away 90% of the desktop OS users to make a point about samba being less important seems reaching at best.

I think you could safely make the if for some reason Samba dies tomorrow, Linux in the workplace gets shoveled into the same grave.

Re:Comedy silver

[robmv]

I don't see why AD integration is needed for a small business, even some medium ones, that only is true if you run Windows clients. I have clients running pure Linux environments (one that you can call medium sized, a Hospital), for what will I need AD integration?

Re:Comedy silver

[Junta]

Simple, if a business has AD infrastructure, AD integration is important. I've seen AD infrastructures in place even in companies of no more than a couple dozen people.

I'm not saying they couldn't have managed without it, but if the powers that be happened to pick AD, then that small business is using AD, whether you think it necessary or not.

We aren't looking for 'is it possible for a small business to avoid AD', we are looking for 'is it true that *currently* AD is not a significant player in small to medium technical businesses?'. The former is undoubtedly true, but the latter is absolutely false.

Re:Comedy silver

[Junta]

Though I wonder if, given Samba 4.0, FreeIPA is really that critical..

You could either have Samba which can serve a pure Linux environment just fine or even cleanly cope with Windows servers.

On the other hand, FreeIPA can serve a pure Linux environment, perhaps a strict subset of samba capability.

I think FreeIPA was more critically important as it was a faster path to directory based authentication and claimed to be much more production ready than Samba 4.0 claimed to be. I think with Samba 4.0, an inflection point has been reached where there is likely no reason to 'settle' for FreeIPA when Samba may enjoy a superset of capability now...

Re:Comedy silver

[jedidiah]

An ActiveDirectory infastructure is unlikely in anything but a "big business". Anything smaller is simply not going to bother.

Certainly a "small business" isn't going to touch AD. They have neither the requirements nor the dedicated staff to manage it.

AD is for environments large enough that they might be using LDAP in their server room.

Re:Comedy silver

[Anonymous Coward]

SMB is a proprietary M$ technology designed to keep people locked into the clutches of the monopolist. It still is not properly and fully documented.
So LDAP, NFS, SVN, FreeIPA are the only *real* alternatives where you can have truly competitive vendors to sell you products and services.
If you like freedom, you hate SMB.

Re:Comedy silver

[RocketRabbit]

That's some good kibology right there. Kibo should be impressed, if he's still knocking about.

Re:Comedy silver

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahahahahahaa!

Maybe some but many small businesses use SBS and and, you're view is wishful and distorted thinking.

Re:Comedy silver

[fuzzywig]

Depends what you call small, but I'd advise any business big enough to have a central server (rather than just storing everything on the machine of the user that created it) to use AD, it is, after all, free once you've bought the windows server (or indeed completely free if you use Samba 4.0).
AD makes administering multiple windows clients much, much easier.

Re:Comedy silver

[Junta]

I've seen a lot of small businesses use AD. AD at that scale is *trivial* to 'manage. AD gets pretty hard when you have a large sprawling enterprise with complex organizational structure being modeled in the LDAP tree and a lot of third party 'enterprise' applications that want to use plain-old LDAP to interact with AD, forcing the administrators to understand the LDAP aspect of AD.

That is not how small businesses use AD. They don't know what an OU is because they take the default, they have a single domain without tree of forest. They have no cause to ever see a LDIF or specify a DN for an LDAP entity. They don't have to go through the certificate management required to enable SSL on LDAP. They don't even have to keep in mind the name or address of the domain controller. All they do is take a Windows server, enable AD, and poof, they have a central authentication store only understanding three things: usernames, passwords, and their selected domain name.

One thing MS did absolutely right was to make the very capable and complex AD scale down to trivial configurations really well.

Re:Comedy silver

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahaha :o)

funny because it's true and remember kids, Linux is 'only the kernel' bwahahaha!

Still Linux is pretty good, I use debian as a base for running the few 2 VMs i need for work and squeeze with backports hasn't let me down.

ati's video drivers could be better tho. Personally I focus on writing progs, but have had a stab at Linux on the network, and while it ain't no walk in the park, it isn't beyond comprehension either. Man up and learn how systems work, you'll be a better person for it ;-P

Re: samba - racist

[dreold]

Samba is a dance. Your confusing it with the term "Sambo" which is generally considered a racist term.

Re:samba - racist

[GameboyRMH]

Samba is just a form of dance AFAIK...now change that last A to an O, and that's something different...

Re:samba - racist

[0100010001010011]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(disambiguation)

Re:samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

Sambo is also the name of a martial art very popular in Russia.

Not important?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, integrating old machines running legacy systems with newer/different platform servers is less important?

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I thought Sambo was a martial art. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28martial_art%29

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

sambo is a russian martial art...

ChromeOS Team Disagrees

[earls]

Unsurprisingly... ;)

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=160570

Really makes Chrome devices a pain in the ass when it comes to network shares. :/

Sambo's

[Anonymous Coward]

I use to really like eating at Sambo's.
Sambo's TV commercial. Circa 1980.

Re:Sambo's

[Gilmoure]

I thought Sambos turned into Denny's.

Re:Sambo's

[OhSoLaMeow]

I thought Sambos turned into Denny's.

Like the tiger turned into butter?

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the 80's, I used to meet up with friends at the local Sambo's Restaurant. However, to maintain Political Correctness, we always referred to it as "Jigaboo's".

It's funny - laugh.

Too bad SMB is so slow

[Theovon]

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the latest versions of the SMB protocol were a bit more asynchronous and high-performance. But using older versions, I found SMB (Samba on one end, CIFS on the other, in general), could not saturate a gigabit ethernet link, while NFS and AFP could. I kept using it because for compatibility but stuck with NFS or AFP for performance, AFP more now that Netatalk 3.x sucks so much less than Netatalk 2.x. (Netatalk 2.x suffered from various problems like random connection drops.)

Re:Too bad SMB is so slow

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

It's all in how the server is configured, and if the client will pipeline requests.

I can easily saturate a gigabit network using modern Linux CIFSFS and Samba. Ensure you turn on pthread based aio on the server, and the client now issues multiple outstanding read/write requests.

SMB2 makes this easier as it does this by default even on Windows clients. Ensuring your server has the pthread-based aio is the key though (depending on server CPU availablilty - on low end systems some OEM's get more mileage by using zero-copy sendfile/recvfile instead).

Jeremy.

Re:Too bad SMB is so slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep

I was getting 98% utilization on gigabit pipes 10 years ago using Samba. It was at Sony Electronics manufacturing plant in San Diego. Throughput with Samba is nothing new.

Re:Too bad SMB is so slow

[TheRealSlimShady]

Take a look at SMB3 (released with Windows 8/Windows Server 2012) and I believe with experimental support in Samba 4(?). Massive improvements in speed, bandwidth utilisation and overall chattiness. It's quite a different beast.

R I G H T

[Billly Gates]

I am sure corporations are lining up hands over fists demanding to get rid of their stable Windows Servers that just work for something that is strange to them from a bearded guy who talks about how evil is for companies to make money selling software.

SMB exists in the corpoare environment only so this is a non issue outside the office. Windows Servers are serving business clients. Last I checked they all use Windows and have no plans to change. Consumers maybe switching to tablets for non work related tasks but they do not use Windows Servers at home. Apache, NGIX, or Java pages work as well as IIS for them.

I see no drop in demand at all. Maybe in 6 years as corpos are typically 5- 8 years behind the times start switching to IPADs with keyboards maybe Samba might have a point. But that day is not today.

Re:R I G H T

[shutdown -p now]

SMB exists in the corpoare environment only so this is a non issue outside the office.

Eh? Most consumer grade NAS on the marker are accessed via SMB (and run Samba on Linux).

Re:R I G H T

[gmack]

In our office we have a 2 TB NAS for backing up desktops and posting files that need to be shared to the whole office. Guess what it runs? Linux + samba + a custom web interface. The fun thing about SAMBA these days is that a lot of people running it don't realize they are running it.

Re: samba - racist

[DiegoBravo]

In Spanish, especially in conquered Latin America, zambo was one of the (many) technical terms used to specify the different mixes resulting from white (Spanish), native american, and blacks, and their descendants. Specifically, zambo(a) was the first generation of the mix between native american and black.
It's current usage is obviously broader and informal, and no longer a "racist" term per se.

Importance not related to Windows

[cait56]

Thinking that Samba is less important because "Windows is less important" is definitely off target. The obvious implication of the statement is that if Samba is less important then NFS is. I certainly am not aware of any trend there. CIFS and NFS both remain valid NAS protocols. To the extent that "Windows is less important" because PCs are less important then you are dealing with some serious trends in storage.

One trend is the growing use of virtual disks in VMs to provide storage. This is just stupidity. Shared files server users far better than virtual disks do. Files are not created for OSs, they are a mechanism for sharing information between users.
.
The other trend is away from NAS and towards object storage. That is a good trend, but not one that will make NAS protocols obsolete anytime soon.

Re:Importance not related to Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Object storage was a fad of the late 1990s, it's going nowhere now just as it did then.

Re:Importance not related to Windows

[snadrus]

I have seen many consider NFS (sharing-side) laborious versus RDP and seeing the files where they are.

Re: samba - racist

[PPH]

Samba is a dance.

Yes. And when we let Microsoft lead, they keep stepping on everyone's toes. I'm going to a friend's office soon to find out why the addition of one stinking Windows 8 system has broken all the file sharing between her existing Vista, Windows 7 and XP systems.

What is displacing AD?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell does "windows is less important" mean, Active Directory hasn't budged, and CIFS still dominates inter-office file sharing.

Skewed perspective...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had it in my career too. Back in the mid-90s, Linux was used sparingly in certain industries and Windows dominated the workplace. To survive, Linux systems did almost always have to play ball.

That balance *has* changed, but not quite that much, though perception of what is going on is very very contingent on career path. About 2003 or so, I was going from place to place with significant Linux footprint, but unavoidable Windows instances. As my experience progressed, opportunities that I pursued afforded me the chance to gravitate to nearly Linux exclusive businesses and organizations. If you are a top notch Linux developer, your reality will change so that Windows will not be a large role.

In relatively recent history, my career has had me participate in more wider sampling of companies with significantly complex IT organizations, despite my recent Linux-exclusive career. I realized that while *my* world had changed, the business world at large was still where it was about 7 years ago with respect to Windows footprint.

Particularly someone as renouned as Allison is likely to have his world changed for more than typical...

Re:Skewed perspective...

[Sigg3.net]

Windows is pervasive in schools and academia. Like Adobe CS is for creative ad studies.

If Linux wants more than a foothold in the business world (client side) she needs to be the go-to experience people have from they are young.

The reason it doesn't happen is not only because MS drops prices when such projects are planned, but lack of public funding. Make an official, standardized, _national_ Linux distro that satisfy both formal as well as democratic requirements.

MS for instance, is anti-transparent. Transparency is important in democracy. F/OSS is democratic.

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic, but Interesting. There is a brazillian music group called Sambo who replays famous music in Samba rythm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o95cSuXlsdk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1YY9l8vDQ

Re: samba - racist

[cod3r_]

Maybe it didn't.. maybe she just told you it did so that you'd go to her office after hours. Ever think about that?

Re: samba - racist

[ElectricTurtle]

Real life is funnier than jokes, you know in some parts of the country there is still a chain of restaurants called Bojangles. I shit you not, look it up.

How to avoid Windows Server?

[Anonymous Coward]

My boss is going to change our network from an efficient Samba-based setup to Windows server-based network. He keeps claiming that Samba doesn't provide a "real domain" (his words). We have quite a few Linux desktops and more Linux VMs, plus various Linux servers.

Through Samba, the Windows machines access the files on the main Linux fileserver, with no additional logins required (the windows machines are joined to the samba domain). We make extensive use of dynamic DNS so that machines are only addressed by name.

How to prevent this migration? I need compelling arguments. My boss is the type who is never wrong (at least, in his own mind). I suspect that the network will turn to cr*p for Linux users.

Re:How to avoid Windows Server?

[tibman]

This should be an easy battle. Make sure he can only use linux on his workstation : )

Re:How to avoid Windows Server?

[bigtrike]

Give him a breakdown of licensing and support costs for the next 5 years. Windows Server gets pretty expensive when you start adding the client acces licenses in for all of the different products.

Re:How to avoid Windows Server?

[tibit]

Have him explain, in technical terms, how what samba provides isn't real. If by it not being real he means "not AD-based", then well, samba 4 is the answer he's looking for. Learn samba4, port ldap data (if you use ldap), start it on a test server (rename the domain to something else!), log in from various versions of windows, test, then deploy and be done. I'll be doing it in the coming weeks: migrating from samba3+ldap to samba4. The dreaded old HP printers are my only nightmare, their print drivers are broken and don't work properly even with windows servers :(

Re:How to avoid Windows Server?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters

Re:How to avoid Windows Server?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.aaxnet.com/design/linux2.html

Re:How to avoid Windows Server?

[Hatta]

I don't understand. Samba and Windows Server have practically identical features. You should be able to mount a Windows share the same way you mount a Samba share.

Best chicken, biscuits, and fries

[Anonymous Coward]

The name on its own is not racist. The company is pretty decent. The guy himself was a great dancer and quite famous. Might as well start calling people Cosby or Chappelle to somehow be derogatory. I would guess it is the same as calling native-americans Chief or Indians calling white guys boss.

Re:Best chicken, biscuits, and fries

[Anonymous Coward]

SHUT YOUR TRAP you uncle COSBY!

Re:Best chicken, biscuits, and fries

[ElectricTurtle]

Well considering that all the sports teams called 'Indians' or 'Braves' are being shamed for being 'racist' for what are clearly neutral or even positive terms, I think that 'Bojangles' falls on a more derogatory side of the line since it evokes/connotes minstrel shows. My wife, who is black, agrees.

Re:Best chicken, biscuits, and fries

[Anonymous Coward]

What does she think of samba?

Re:Best chicken, biscuits, and fries

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife, who is black, agrees.

Whereas I, who am also black, think you're both jackasses.

Windows is more open

[DarkOx]

Samba is less important because windows is more open. Other than hosting cifs shares there is now little you can't do in the server room without Samba. Samba certainly makes things easier in that as others have pointed out "it just works". The fact is today AD is at the core the identity system many enterprises use.

The good news is that with nss_ldap, the mit kerberos package and little else you are off to the races now. It takes a little setup Samba would do for you, but a couple cron jobs to keep kerb TGTs refreshed, some thought about your ldap config, perhaps and AD schema extention or two and you have got what you need.

Its nothing like the bad old days of trying to participate in an NT domain. Its not great Microsoft has played fast and loose with some standards but AD is open enough that foreign clients can participate without specifically designed compatibility layers like Samba.

Re:Windows is more open

[hawkingradiation]

Open enough for Microsoft to try and sue against Samba's development?

Re:Windows is more open

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

They're not going to do that. The director of Windows server development at Microsoft even gave us a quote for the Samba 4 press release.

https://www.samba.org/samba/news/releases/4.0.0.html

For the tl;dr crowd:

"Active Directory is a mainstay of enterprise IT environments, and Microsoft is committed to support for interoperability across platforms," said Thomas Pfenning, director of development, Windows Server. "We are pleased that the documentation and interoperability labs that Microsoft has provided have been key in the development of the Samba 4.0 Active Directory functionality."

Thanks a *lot* Thomas !

Muha

[Anonymous Coward]

You are probably talking about GM and the like. There are lots of deep pros in the financial industry and other industry datacenters who are doing customized things on Linux which do not involve SMB at all. Things like millisecond trading, market data distribution, search engines, silly things for teenagers on massive scale, and a lot more. They will never touch Windows, because they know what they do. They come from Unix, MVS, and VMS.

Only the rust-belt muppets run Windows in the datacenter.

Re:Muha

[icebike]

I'm talking about Main-Street businesses. Not Wall Street businesses.
Look around you for pete sake. Business does not begin with GM and end at the NYSE.

Re:Muha

[jedidiah]

An operation like that may just as likely be using a Unix based appliance. Even for small businesses, server components are no longer Windows only. In some case, the client side of the vertical apps aren't Windows only anymore either.

gmail, dropbox

[bigtrike]

If you've got a small enough organization, you can probably get by with gmail tied to your domain and either dropbox or serverless CIFS for sharing files.

Children of the Meme.

[Anonymous Coward]

More of the desktop / server / business / content creation market is going away meme. Stop already. Nobody is buying it.

Now that apple is losing global market share and apple will be selling a 99 dollar phone, and the microsoft windows 8 / tablet combo turned out to be a dude (sic), all the players that took their chips off the desktop market and went all in on selling pink iphones to little girls have some explaining to do to the shareholders.

The smart phone margins are going to get crushed. The smart phone market is about 18 months away from the commodity phase and 3% gross margins.

And all these fools that pissed away the steady ka-ching, triple AAA cashflow of the business market are still floating the get rich quick, "smart phone bubble meme" and it's logical inverse, the "desktop is dead meme". It is misdirection to keep the older guys, the Buffets and Soros and Schiffs of the world, smart old guys with lots of money, the 800 pound titans that did not grow with an iphone in their cribs, from dropping the axe on these fools.

Home SMB

[tepples]

SMB exists in the corpoare environment only so this is a non issue outside the office.

Say what? I was under the impression that file sharing between PCs running Windows on the same LAN used the SMB protocol.

Windows Servers are serving business clients.

Not always. There used to be Windows Home Server.

and valve goes to linux

[Anonymous Coward]

windows isnt important ever again

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it didn't.. maybe she just told you it did so that you'd go to her office after hours. Ever think about that?

Yeah but don't get too excited. She might be a fat chick.

I realize they have two X chromosomes but they don't actually register as "female". How can you respect a woman who doesn't respect and take care of herself?

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

Sambo is a Scandinavian (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian) term meaning "the one i live together with as husband and wife", there is no gender information in the term.
Sambo may also be used by people just sharing the same apartment with equal rights, which is btw. the exact meaning of this conjunction.

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that like Coon Chicken Inn?

Bonus points if you know the reference

Re:I think you are looking for this classic of ol'

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the longest troll I have ever read. Good work.

+5 Troll

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Bojangles is racist, and I never heard anybody complain about the name of the restaurant. Now, if you really wanted to be taken 'aback, there was the time in the 80s when somebody handed me a package of "Dixie Boy" fire crackers, which had stereotyped black kids eating watermelon on the package. It was 1986, IIRC, and he may have bought them in South Carolina. I have a hard time imagining they were actually still being sold then. They may have come from his grandfather's closet or something. I honestly don't recall if we lit them, so they may have already been a "vintage collectible" at that point.

Re: samba - racist

[Alef]

It could probably be translated to "cohabitation partner". The legal term "sambo" refers to each of two people living together as a couple in a long-term relationship with a shared economy (like they were married). So simply sharing an apartment would not qualify from a legal perspective. (This is for example relevant if one of them were to die.)

Re:I think you are looking for this classic of ol'

[Anonymous Coward]

I could do better with a +5 Bastard Sword.

Re: samba - racist

[operagost]

It's a biscuits'n'gravy place. I do have to ask what's wrong with "Bojangles", though. You do know it was Bill Robinson's nickname, right? If that's racist, then so is "Coolio" or "Dr. Dre".

Re:I think you are looking for this classic of ol'

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying Obama is also a Ballmer pawn like you ? Yeah, sounds right.

Also Homos Don't Use Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

..because it discriminates against them. Use that as you next propaganda meme, Mr $hit.

Summary by the Hulk

[wonkey_monkey]

Interview Bruce Byfield did with me after the Samba 4.0 release.

Next week, Hulk interview Steve Ballmer. Goodnight puny humans!

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because Microsoft is an infectious cunt. Wear three condoms.

Is S4 release a part of 12.04LTS repository yet?

[Anomalyst]

or is it still at the alpha release?

Wishlist

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you make it

"BSD is only for kiddie porn makers"

"Apache is a racial slur against Indians"

"Linux kills little penguins for the cosmetic industry"

"Hitler wrote Mein Kampf using OpenOffice"

"Amnesty International will crumble without MS Office"

"Mao was the initial core developer of SVN"

"Kim Il Dictator controls tanks using RPIs"

"Firefox is financed by brothel pimps"

I really enjoy to ram some counterpropaganda up into your Redmond asses. So keep me busy. Thank you.

Go For It !

[Anonymous Coward]

If your user don't use MS Office primarily, then virtualize the crap and use RDP to access it. Do your corporate applications either with Qt-based fat clients or in the browser using HTML5. You could also spend some money on making legacy apps work with Wine.
Especially sensitive R&D data will be much more secure on Linux and BSD machines. Allow MS Office only for "unrestricted" documents. Mandate OpenOffice with AppArmor for "secret" documents.
Do not allow the Windows VMs to surf the net - that will only give Chicom intel a chance to pwn your R&D data and then kill your employer by means of cheap copycat products.

Re:Go For It !

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/RSA-replaces-SecurID-tokens-after-hack-1256417.html

What he really means...

[FyberOptic]

...is that Samba has been such a sub-par version of the protocols for years that businesses still primarily refuse to use it in place of dedicated and reliably-functioning Windows servers. That's the only reason Samba is less important.

Seriously, you've been developing it for 20+ years and you still haven't implemented a proper mailslot interface?

I don't care what anyone says, there is no comparable product offering the same level of management and privilege control as what Microsoft offers. I can hear the open-source crowd freaking out already, but it doesn't change that fact. This is why Windows servers predominantly manage Windows clients. Linux can stick to the databases and web serving, where the file/permissions system is far less important.

I'm not even a Windows Server fan, but prefer to configure one of those any day than the nightmare of cryptic config files in the alternative.

Re: What he really means...

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Oh sure. The mail slot interface is an essential part of the protocol. That's why you just can't buy Samba based products anymore, all commercial NAS are re-badged versions of Windows server.

Sarcasm, in case anyone was wondering..

Jeremy

Re: What he really means...

[FyberOptic]

Pretty much every Linux/Samba-based NAS on the market has the same policy limitations as a desktop Linux installation.

Plus, the mailslot interface is a very important part of the protocol. It's how networked users have been able to communicate with one another for quite a long time, without needing third-party software, which also provides an interface for applications to also do so across machines. The reason it was likely never fully implemented on Linux is because there is no reasonable way to implement it, given the lack of any kind of standardization (particularly in the GUI). Literally the only thing available, after 20 years, is Linpopup, which basically doesn't really even work anymore anyway. And there's no proper interface to take advantage of mailslot functionality to make anything better. RealPopup is a very good WinPopup replacement on Windows, with quite a bit of configurability, but it's completely unable to communicate with a Samba-based machine in its native mode.

So, what options does that leave us with? 1) A cross-platform internet-reliant instant messenger service, full of ads and spam and regular updates. 2) A local server-based chat application, requiring configuration of both a server and clients, and also requiring aforementioned server which severs all network communications if that machine is down. 3) Something Bonjour-based, all of which are typically extremely bloated and require installing garbage Apple software on a PC to communicate.

That means all of the Linux-based machines I use have no way of communicating with Windows users on the network, meaning I have to always have a Windows PC as well, because there is no reasonable alternative.

Re: What he really means...

[CAIMLAS]

... Jabber?

You're making a problem out of nothing to make an (invalid) point.

Re:What he really means...

[fuzzywig]

A better example would be Group Policy. GP is hands down the best way of administering a whole bunch of machines centrally, with minimum effort. The only thing close to it on non Microsoft platforms is Puppet, which from my limited experience is also great, but it's taken until Puppet for anyone else to get close to the usefulness of GP.

(which is not to say that GP doesn't have it's own 'interesting' failure modes)

Re: What he really means...

[FyberOptic]

And you're attempting to downplay serious lacks of policy and communication support in an attempt to disregard the point.

The fact that businesses use what they use proves my point.

Re: samba - racist

[Darinbob]

No, Sampo was a magic item in the Kalevela that brought fortune to its holder.

Re: samba - racist

[PPH]

Picture Rachel McLish, but blond.

maybe she just told you it did so that you'd go to her office after hours. Ever think about that?

Except for her husband. Picture Dolph Lundgren, with normal hair. And glasses. I'd never pick on someone wearing glasses. I'm just a nice guy that way.

Re: samba - racist

[Benaiah]

Actually we use the term Sambo for a Fish round here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_fish

Take over from Microsoft

[Baki]

Samba might take over leading the standard from Microsoft, implicitly. Since as others have remarked samba is taken for granted and built into anything. Even an Ubuntu Desktop automatically shows "windows" network drives but nfs often is not by default enabled or scanned (either linux client side or server side, e.g. on by Synology NAS). Would be interesting to see how Microsoft would react to that.

Re:Take over from Microsoft

[Baki]

Hmm, please ignore my post :). Reading some other comments I realize it is totally wrong...

Windows is not less important

[LoRdTAW]

In the world of industrial automation, windows unfortunately seems to reign supreme. Just about every development environment for PLC and PAC controllers is windows and .Net based. And as of late, PC based automation (think PC based PLC/PAC) is becoming more popular and guess what is the primary platform? Windows. You might be thinking "How the hell can windows be used in a hard real-time application?" Well it is possible and the first time I ever saw it was in the Aerotech A3200 platform. Its a pretty neat CNC motion control platform which uses a Windows PC networked via fire wire to what they call intelligent drives. The software installs an RTX server (then from Ardence) which is given full hard real-time access to the 1394 adapter. The server runs the core motion control/automation kernel, Windows cant mask any of the interrupts which would cause "jitter" and delay on the 1394 bus. Not sure who else uses it but there has to be more. Beckhoff makes a lot of automation hardware that is all PC based and they offer their own automation software suite. Its all .Net Windows XPE, 7 and CE based and fully integrated into Visual studio. Kontron offers Linux support for their ThinkIO system but its roll your own. Not that its bad but in Automation, ease of development is crucial to timely delivery of a system. I don't want to sound overly dramatic but Windows and .Net has become a cancer in the industrial automation world. Maybe cancer is too strong a word, drug might be more appropriate. Visual studio and .Net along with C# is quite alluring to companies looking to build a large automation system with the least amount of programming effort. Even the big players like Allen Bradley and Siemens all have Windows only software. Sure maybe some of it can run under WINE but that isn't the point here.

I have yet to see any automation company make any effort to offer a real soup-to-nuts Linux based automation platform that doesn't require you to roll your own C/C++ code (if someone does please let me know). There is EPICS which is used on many particle accelerators but I still cant figure out how to use it. The only partial exception is Opto22 who's SnapPAC hardware controller runs Linux. But their PC automation control software is Windows only as well as their Development, configuration and HMI tools.

Linux also lacks big CAD/CAM names like Solid Works, Autocad, BobCAD/CAM and even Ashlar Vellum. However, most of them offer OSX versions but its not Linux. Thankfully, FreeCAD looks to be the most promising FOSS CAD application along with PyCAM for converting the CAD models to G code for CNC machines.

Re:Windows is not less important

[jlusk4]

Huh. No wonder Stuxnet was such a success.

Re:Windows is not less important

[cheesybagel]

There is some really old open source CAD software available like BRL-CAD which was used by the United States Army Research Laboratory to design the XM-1 tank (i.e. the prototype for the M-1 Abrams). CATIA has a Linux server but the clients only run on Windows. NX Unigraphics however runs on Linux.

The embedded people have switched to Linux and Eclipse development for some time now, while the film industry people are content using their 3D modelers on Linux. I don't know what needs to happen for the CAD companies to get on the program.

Most NAS or Media server run it

[Anonymous Coward]

That's typical of a lot of NAS boxes::
e.g. Zytel NAS
http://www.trustedreviews.com/zyxel-nsa325_Peripheral_review

They're running on ARM chips typically (low idle power yet fast performance). All linux with Samba.

In fact, I don't think I've ever run into a NAS box that was running Windows. Servers yes, but NAS?

Re: samba - racist

[dargaud]

There are plenty of comments below about the racistness of 'sambo', but I have no idea as to what it's about.

Re:samba - racist

[Tripkipke]

it's also 9 points in scrabble!

What to say about SAMBA

[Anonymous Coward]

'Mas que nada' - roughly translated as 'whatever'

SAMBA everywhere

[Danathar]

That being said, I'd MUCH rather use something that's better documented. SAMBA is used on all sorts of linux enabled media servers and the fact of the matter is it does not always work. Especially with other systems that are trying to implement SMB/CIFS like my Mac (no longer SAMBA from Apple) or media servers with differing versions of SAMBA the result is often buggy or something not working at all.

Thank you, Jeremy Allison!

[hirschma]

Jeremy,

Since you're hanging about, let me take the opportunity to say thanks for making such a vital, useful and wonderful piece of software - and thanks to the rest of the Samba team, too.

I've used it at work over the decades, I use it at home even now. It's made my life better. That is not at all hyperbole.

I know that this is Slashdot, but it wouldn't hurt to say thanks, right?

Cheers!

Re: samba - racist

[Anonymous Coward]

Add "little black" in front of it and look it up.

Umm, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

A "cancer" your paymaster is very happy to spread, I guess. Nice $hilling.

Ad integration

[hawk]

I usually react to ad integration by switching to a different program . . .

hawk