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Unix Books Media Operating Systems Software Book Reviews

Review:Samba: Integrated UNIX and Windows 71

Posted by Hemos from the no-honest-i'm-an-NT-box dept.
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
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Review:Samba: Integrated UNIX and Windows More

Review:Samba: Integrated UNIX and Windows

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  • Re:new oreilly samba book coming in 6 days (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Fortunately, SSC will be coming out with a second edition of the Samba book before September :)

  • Weakness (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    By and large, the book, as discussed is good on detail and authoritative. But there's one big weakness. It 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.

  • Re:Samba to become obsolete - or not? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    methinks you have it backwards. If I remember correctly (brain clanking as it attempts to access data that is almost 10 years old) NetBIOS is just a protocol for basic peer-to-peer network communication between named computers on a network.

    Windows uses NetBIOS to send Server Message Blocks (SMBs). Seems to me that Win95/98/NT now does SMB via TCP, and NetBIOS isn't all that useful anymore (except for backward compatibility with 3.11, etc).

    Actually, the more I think about it, I seem to remember that NetBIOS was more or less obsoleted by NetBEUI a while back (although I may be confusing things on this point).

  • Re:new oreilly samba book coming in 6 days (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25, 1999 @07:19AM (#1879986)
    Unfortunately this got a little bit delayed... Using samba [oreilly.com] is scheduled to arrive only by September... 8-(

  • Weakness (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25, 1999 @05:09AM (#1879987)
    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.
  • I keep seeing this crop up every now and then. I just am not quite sure where the trouble lies? After reviewing a couple docs that come with Samba, it says somehting like "See ENCRYPTION.txt." Then looking at that revealed to set encryption = yes, maybe one or two other things, and voila...

    But then again, I'm one of those that finds man pages useful, your mileage may vary.

  • 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.

  • when Win2000 comes out, win 95,98 and NT won't just go away. For that reason, I would imagine that windows will have to include SMB for 2000 and beyond.

    ------------------
  • Posted by dajsimpson:

    SAMS now has a book called: "Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours"
    Naff title, but content looks good so far.
    It covers Samba 2.0.3 and PDC support. One of the authors, Gerald Carter, is an active member of the Samba team.
  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Let's assume your rumor is true...

    1) Sun's implementation would be a copy of a point in time (e.g. when the NT-privy company became non-privy). Samba and Sun both have to reverse engineer from that point on (and trust ME, MS would change everything).

    2) Samba will still be as cheap or cheaper (unless Sun pays me money to use it).

    3) As you note, Sun's version probably won't be open source. So why would I want to use it? "Commercial support"? I think we've already defeated that argument soundly.

    4) There are ALREADY commercial products that do what Samba does.

    5) Leaving the particular example of Samba aside now, let's try to think of other well-known, mature OS products being obsoleted (obsoletified?) by commercial (proprietary) products. Apache vs IIS? Linux vs NT?

    So remind me again why Samba will be obsolete?
    --
    "Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
  • Posted by Jeremy Allison - Samba Team:

    > in fact AT+T/Sun won a legal round with
    > Microsoft a few months back allowing them
    > access to the Windows 2000 source code.

    No. That's incorrect. AT&T (and by proxy, Sun)
    settled for cash and *no* access to source code.

    I have some internal knowledge of this case.

    Regards,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.

  • Re:Samba to become obsolete? (Score:5)

    by gavinhall ( 33 ) on Tuesday May 25, 1999 @01:29PM (#1879994)
    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.

  • I meant "hold my breath for it to be open" Sorry all
  • Let me give everyone here a little skinny for a /. article that will be in the works soon. 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.

    I'd assume that it will be for Solaris 2.x SPARC first, then ported to x86 and possibly open sourced, although I wouldn't open my breath. For those of us in the situation where we need to talk to both worlds, this is a godsend.

    SAMBA's done a great job and is one of the best tools ever created for interoperablility, but with SUN's new tool, at least Solaris users will have a commercially supported product to do what we need to do.

    As always, redirect all flames to /dev/null.

  • You are exactly correct. I write reviews for Slashdot as well, and if I generally give good reviews, it is because I read good books.

    For me to invest my own time a) reading a poor book to completion, and b) writing a review of that poor book, I would have to be extremely motivated.

    I put a lot of effort and thought into my reviews. They are predominantly about computer programming books, because that is what I read and that is what I do. I like to think that others appreciate that effort and thought.

    Oh, by the way, I am about to write a bad review, hopefully finish it tonight. It does happen. :-)
  • Hell, I used to go to school with the author -- he and I got our first UNIX-related jobs running a NeXTStep cluster. Got my autographed copy of his book right here in my lap. He's a great guy, it's a great book, and it's totally worth it.

    --adr
  • (ps the only samba documentation is man pages, it took me 3 solid days to even get a share up)

    I have lots of samba documentation in /usr/local/doc/ There are examples and everything.

  • actually, samba itself is not used as a client, although the 2.0x series has included some client utilities. e.g., http://us1.samba.org/samba/doc s/man/smbclient.1.html [samba.org] but make sure to read their disclaimer at http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/FAQ/#19 [samba.org] . the samba team is officially supporting http://us1.samba.org/samb a/ftp/docs/htmldocs/smbsh.1.html [samba.org], though. regardless, if you're using linux chances are that with any utility you will probably need to compile smbfs into your kernel or load it as a module.

    hope this helps.

    -l

  • Thanks for the kudos, adder! -john.
  • Try reading the vanilla Motif 1.2 man pages. Pages and pages of tables describing resources: XmCreateManagedWidget (1m) XM_FOO_PROPERTY
  • You can use smbclient, which works similarly to a command-line FTP client. Under Linux you can use smbfs to mount SMB shares onto your file-system.
  • SMB and Netbios are not going anywhere. Windows 2000 adds "enhancements" to the current WINS (based on NBNR or NetBiosNameService) name resolution, which is based on SMB and Netbios, coupled with names derived from DHCP.

    The fun part for the Samba crew is to incorperate the functions added by ADS....

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/server/Technica l/networking/wins.asp

    Cheers,

    Krakken

  • new oreilly samba book coming in 6 days (Score:5)

    by veggiespam ( 5283 ) on Tuesday May 25, 1999 @06:44AM (#1880005)
    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.

  • My only disappointment with this book was the author's decision to not discuss the (beta) PDC functionality in Samba. I can understand his reluctance to document features that aren't entirely supported in the current release,, but I would have appreciated at least a theoretical discussion of the issues involved.

    I believe that the next non-bug-fix version is going to support using Samba as a PDC without requiring a recompile. That's cool.

  • digital docs vs. bound texts (Score:4)

    by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Tuesday May 25, 1999 @06:35AM (#1880007) Homepage
    On a more general, related note: even though online docs are updated more regularly, and are free (qua beer), they are still inferior to ink on paper in a well-bound book in so many ways that I see no real replacement for the latter. The human eye was not really designed to absorb back-lit information - the real world uses reflected light. The resolution of the printed page is still much higher. The portability and flexibility of a book is still unmatched, and the multiple strategies for interaction - browsing/skimming, tables of contents, indices, scanning for pictures, distinction by text styles, etc. - are only poorly aped by any digital medium. In the time it takes for me to load even a small local search utility and then render a page or two, I can flip through a text, look up a person's name in the index, check the references on 3 pages, and then scan the bibliography.

    The main drawback of the book as interface is its nondynamic content - new information means a new book. However, considering how old a lot of the documentation out there is (when was the last time the Linux-Hardware-FAQ was updated?), in practice that's not a problem limited to the paper media.
  • Sorry but your post read like this book is just what MindCraft DIDN'T want to find.

  • A non-stellar review! (Score:3)

    by Some guy named Chris ( 9720 ) on Tuesday May 25, 1999 @04:54AM (#1880009) Journal

    I'm so glad a less than rave review of a book finally appeared here on slashdot. Maybe it will finally shut up those conspiracy nuts who claim that all book reviews on slashdot are good only to make money off the link to Amazon.

    I think the reason most reviews here are positive is because most people won't invest the time to write a review of a book they didn't like.

  • I have had my unfair share of problems with the smbfs and smbmount. The smbmount command that don_bailey posted, did not work for me. The only type of command that at least comes as far as asking for a password, but complain about "invalid argument", is as follows:

    smbmount //server_name/share_name /mount_point -U user_name -I ip_addr

    I also get an error message in the message log that states as follows:
    May 26 14:14:50 hrotti kernel: SMBFS: need mount version 6

    I am currently running a 2.2.3 kernel, with smbfs as kernel driver, samba-1.9.18p10-3, smbmount version is 2.0.1

    While suffering from this problem I have had to resort to the smbclient. Which for me, is not at all a satisfying solution, since I copy files to and from the share allmost constantly during a day.

    Does anybody have any comments on what might be wrong with the command ?

  • Confusing the issue is the fact that IBM refers to "NetBIOS" as both the API and the wire protocol (NetBEUI). Microsoft will sometimes use the term "NBT" for NetBIOS-over-TCP/IP.

    --

  • I have to learn to stop relying on my memory. Thank's for the correction.

    --

  • The "rumor" is true - in fact AT+T/Sun won a legal round with Microsoft a few months back allowing them access to the Windows 2000 source code.

    So while your points 2 through 4 are valid, Sun's SMB implementation is up-to-date and presumably 100% compatible with Microsoft's (since they are based on the same code). I believe Sun's implementation also does Domain Controllers (beta in Samba) and will be Active Directory compatible.

    That having been said, in the recent ZDNet "NOS Shootout", Sun installed Samba rather than LanMan/Unix because is faster.


    --
  • I've got some documentation on my particular settings for that sort of thing here [tntech.edu]. Debian GNU/Linux client, Win95 print server, HP Deskjet 600C printer.
  • I am ashamed to say that I have never learned anything from the man pages, man is just gross, and a waste of time for me. If --help isnt enough I either give up or find another way. I'm sure the LDP is a great effort and useful for some, for people who just want to run Linux, however, its a horrible experience. There has to be a better way. (ps the only samba documentation is man pages, it took me 3 solid days to even get a share up)
  • This is an extremely dry book that is about as fascinating to read as a man page

    Am I the only one, even amongst fellow nerds, who finds man pages interesting, contrary to what is implied in the review ?

    Ok there are some poor ones, but most Linux man pages are quite good.

  • Instead they have "funky" html-pages or it's own strange "help system" :-(

    HTML isn't bad; you can include images, use a little color here AND, most importantly, you can split the information up in managable chunks in stead of one huge document. Have you read the 'bash' manpage? It's more than 5000 lines!! It takes me forever to find something in there. Plus, you can make an index, crosslinks, keyword index, etc.

    And, if you keep the fancy HTML stuff out of the pages you can even view them with a text browser like lynx. No, HTML isn't all that bad; look at the Qt Reference Documentation [troll.no] for an example of what I consider good HTMLized documentation. Lightweight, clear, consistent, links all over the place. I write my documentation like that.

    As for "strange help systems": indeed, they are often more of a nuisance than help.

    - Nemosoft

  • I totally wholehartedly with out a doubt agree from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head!
  • Hey I got a salary boost for writing linux geek on my resume, way more than I got for the mcse!

    = )
  • Samba is (presumably) so named because it permits Linux to communicate using SMB (Server Message Blocks). SMB (as I understand it) is the upper-level protocol used by NetBIOS. NetBIOS is supposed to go away in Windows 2000 (aka NT 5). From that point forward, there will be no need for SMB and thus Samba.

    The above is intended more as a question than a statement; is my analysis or understanding of the facts incorrect?
  • I had a problem early on with the links supplied to Amazon, but now I think I'm OK with it. Overall, I think that the reviews are fair (I mean, what can you say about reviewing Linux books anyway - they're all good...) and I can understand why a site that doesn't charge anything and has minimal advertising needs to try to grab whatever they can.

    Hope I don't get a neg for this, but my plug would be for bookpool.com. Great prices on ORA stuff, quick shipping, Linux friendly. I wish they offered the same deal to linking sites as Amazon does, but I guess that's why they're cheaper. Oh well.

    Good review, I'll probably get the book.
  • Yes, I'd have to agree completely... I've greately enjoyed studying the bash man-pages for instance, though there are a few badly-written ones around.

    But they certainly needn't be dry, Especially the man pages of the software by individuals (I mean, not companies or projects) are quite humoristic, though still valuable as a manual.
  • Try smbmount. I tried using smbclient but it was somewhat flakey on my system (RedHat 5.2). smbmount worked flawlessly.

  • I think the book is better than that. (Score:5)

    by Doke ( 23992 ) on Tuesday May 25, 1999 @04:35AM (#1880025) Homepage
    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.
  • I believe what you're looking for is smbclient or smbmount.

    note: for smbmount, you'll have to have smbfs support in your kernel.
  • It depends where do you want to run this server on: Given your case (you use Linux), then you don't need no special software. The Linux kernel itself has a SMB client for filesystems (you use it with the command smbmount, it's usually shipped as a compiled module so you won't even have to recompile).

    If you happened to use an old version of Linux with no SMB support, or if you happened to run another OS (I mean, a Unix, Mac or Amiga OS), Samba ships with smbclient, which you can use more or less as an FTP equivalent for all SMB functions - it runs pretty smoothly, although smbmount is much better.
  • No, the SMB protocol is staying with us. It will only implement and addition to be more like Novell's NDS - the Active Directory. I have used Windows NT 5.0 (beta), and is compatible with the existing, SMB-based networks. I think (if I recall correctly, I tested this software a while ago) you will have to point your client to a directory master (something like an enhanced WINS server), which will tell him which service corresponds to each object on the tree, and where (on the net) is it to be found.
  • The problem is more that this book came out almost a year ago and the PDC stuff went beta around november/december. He could not really document the configuration of stuff that was about to be written. I have this book and still refer to it at times but SWAT, the PDC stuff and the NT/ACL stuff all came later - Samba is a fast-moving target and this book is showing it's age.
  • I am sorry, but that is simply not true. I learnt encryption from that book. If you still have problems with that (or other issues), follow my link - http://www.germany.net/teilnehmer/101/69082/samba. html
  • Probably comparing man pages to reading definitions out of the dictionary. way off.

    Man pages often include things you need to watch out for. Some even cover large classes of software.

  • Eh? Man pages are great resources when you need
    to look something up, what some randome switch
    does or what not, but interesting? You probably
    are the only one. :-)
  • I checked Amazon.com a couple of weeks ago and had the same problem; until I checked Fatbrain.com, which had it in stock and in my house faster than I could have downloaded Samba (with my dial-up connection).

    Moral of the story: This is market competition at its finest; if one store doesn't have it, grab that ISBN number and check all of the other online stores - in about 5 minutes.
  • I read man pages...but i will also browse an encyclopedia...
  • Look in the examples directory of the samba
    distribution... there is a script to use SMBClient
    to set up your printcap on a linux box to print
    to SMB shared printers on a WinNT/95/98 machine.
    The included script works for me with almost no
    changes.
    (Was that a run-on sentence?)
  • Well, John's book only deals with Samba 1.9.18
    while 2.0.x has been out for a while. The latest
    is 2.0.4b.

    Two other members of the Samba team, Jerry Carter
    and Richard Sharpe, have written another Samba
    book: SAMS Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours.

    Don't worry about the Title. We tried to make
    the book useful for the novice as well as the
    more experienced user of Samba.

    Check it out on Amazon and FatBrain.

    Check out the great review on Amazon :-)
  • smbmount \\\\computer name\\share password -U username -W workgroup or domain -c 'mount mountpoint'

    Works like a charm.

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