Review:Samba: Integrated UNIX and Windows

Well, after a long wait and fanfare, Kurt has sent a review of John Blair's Samba effort Samba: Integrating UNIX and Windows. If you need to make those two play well together, click below for more information. Samba: Integrated UNIX and Windows author John D. Blair pages publisher Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. rating 7 reviewer Kurt DeMaagd ISBN summary This book provides in depth detail about installing and configuring Samba. The Scenario John Blair, a member of the Samba development team, tackles the issue of integrating Windows and UNIX machines using Samba. While Samba is best known for allowing a UNIX host to act as a file server for Windows machines, it also includes services for print serving, authentication, name resolution, and other services needed for Windows networks. Blair begins with a discussion of NetBIOS and SMB, the core protocols of Windows networking, but spends a majority of the book going into excrutiating detail about how to install and configure Samba. In addition to general configuration settings, it discusses the necessary configuration settings for approximately 35 different operating systems, including Linux, OS/2, Solaris, many more obscure operating systems.

As the preface notes, this is a book primarily for UNIX systems administrators. Since it devotes a large amount of space to configuration parameters and explanation, it is definitely not a book to sit down and read on a lazy Sunday afternoon. If you are an administrator attempting to set up Samba, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a more casual reading experience, you will be quickly bogged down in the configuration details.

What's Bad? This is an extremely dry book that is about as fascinating to read as a man page. Many portions of the book are little more than a paper versions of existing documentation. For everyone who doesn't like to pay for information that is already freely distributed, all of the contents are accessable in the Samba man pages or online at Samba's web site.

What's Good? The chapter detailing the SMB and NetBIOS protocols is an interesting and valuable addition to the book. In a text that devotes a majority of its space to installation and configuration, it provides an interesting insight into the underlying workings of the server. For those who are installing Samba, it provides step-by-step installation and configuration information for a variety of operating systems.

So What's In It For Me? If you need to configure a Samba server, this book is a valuable resource. It provides in depth configuration details and examples for a variety of scenarios.

Buy this book at Amazon.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Windows Networking Protocols
3. Downloading and Building Samba
4. Components of the Samba Suite
5. Global Configuration Options
6. Service Configuration Options
7. Browser Configuration Options
8. Access Control Configuration Examples
9. Service Configuration Examples
10. Other Tricks and Techniques
11. Diagnosing Problems
12. The Linux SMB Filesystem

Comments

Weakness

[Anonymous Coward]

By and large, the book, as discussed is good on detail and authoritative. But there's one big weakness. I fails to go into any depth on encrypted Windows password authentication. Newcomers can easily bash their brains out for hours wondering why they can't get login permission. Blair's solution is to go for plain-text authentication - very weak. It's covered in the more recent HOWTO's, but not in this book.

Good book overall...but covers Samba 1.9

[Steven Borrelli]

Bear in mind that the book is from the summer of 1998 and covers Samba 1.9. Notable changes in 2.0 include the use of of autoconf, better NT domain functionality and the new SWAT Web configuration tool. (And I am unsure of this, but the libdes compilation section might be obsolete now too).

As others have mentioned, the sections on Windows networking alone make the book worthwhile. In addition, I found the section on setting up Samba to use encrypted passwords highly useful. There is also a large section on all of the Samba configuration options.

While much of the book's information is located in the Samba source tree, the information is spread out among dozens of files. Consider the price of this book a small investment to avoid hefty NT client fees.

Re:Samba to become obsolete?

[gavinhall]

Posted by Jeremy Allison - Samba Team:

> SUN Microsystems bought out a company that was
> privy to NT's source code (trust me, MS doesn't
> want anyone to know about this). In taking
> classes for SUN, I ran across an instructor who
> told the class to learn SAMBA, but not to dwell
> on it because SUN was working on a TRUE SMB
> client for UNIX.

Oh, you mean Project *Cascade* (now released as Sun's PC/Netlink services. I'm afraid your 'secret knowledge' is a bit out of date (oh, *do* pay attention, 007... :-).

It's a port of AT&T's Advanced Services for UNIX. Yes, that old chestnut (the one that AT&T sued MS over lack of access to source code, and settled for a bunch of cash and *no* source code :-). So it's actually a dead product (old, crufty SVR3 code, with a user level thread library) ported to Solaris.

Oh yes. And it's *slooow****. Note that in the latest PC Week benchmark that Sun was involved in they chose to use Samba, rather than any of the products they actually *sell*. Hmmmmm. Doesn't inspire confidence does it...... :-) :-).

Regards,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

new oreilly samba book coming in 6 days

[veggiespam]

according to my copy of the oreilly catalogue (data march 1999), a new book, "using samba" by kelly, donham, & collier-brown, will be released in june 1999. the pre-review also mentions suff about "advanced topics in security and complex environments" (passwords encryption perhaps?). comes with a CD. the book also covers the v2.0 gui.

I think the book is better than that.

[Doke]

I bought this book at a recent computer show. I found it very interesting, and quite easy to read. In fact, I read straight through it in two days.

It provides a great deal of useful background information about CIFS/SMB/MS networking, in a clear sensible fashion. I learned a great deal about browsing, elections, primary and backup domain servers, etc. Because of this, I would even recommend the book to pure NT admins (poor suckers).

For Samba admins, the book is invaluable. It contains a clear concise, indexed, explaination of every configuration parameter. Several parameters that I didn't understand in Samba's included docs made sense after reading this. The book also has a large number of useful examples.

All of the information in the book could probably be obtained free from the net. However, it would
be in pieces from various sources. This book collects and organizes it.

I highly recommended this book.