This book, which has been officially adopted by the Samba Team and is under the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), is a comprehensive guide to Samba administration. The 2nd edition focuses on Samba 2.2 and covers the most important features of 3.0, which was under development as this book went to print. Samba is a cross-platform triumph: it turns a Unix or Linux system into a file and print server for Microsoft Windows network clients. Samba is so robust, flexible, fast, and secure that many people are choosing it over Windows NT/2000/XP for their file and print services. Samba is also free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License. This book will help you make file and print sharing as robust, powerful, and efficient as possible. The authors delve into the internals of the Windows activities and protocols to an unprecedented degree, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each feature in Windows domains and in Samba itself. Using Samba takes you from basic installation and configuration--on both the client and server side, for a wide range of systems--to subtle details of security, cross-platform compatibility, and resource discovery that make the difference between whether a user sees the folder they expect or a cryptic error message. The range of this book knows few bounds. Wondering how to integrate Samba's authentication with that of a Windows PDC? How to get Samba to serve Microsoft Dfs shares? How to share files on Mac OS X? These and a dozen other issues of interest to system administrators are covered. A whole chapter is dedicated to troubleshooting. Whether you're playing on one note or a full three-octave range, on your personal computer or an enterprise network, Using Samba will give you an efficient and secure server.

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Using Samba, 2nd Edition Review,  September 18 2003
Submitted by Chris in Illinois   [Respond | View]

Indespensible

As a Windows user in a 12-step recovery plan, I had a lot to learn how real computing was done. Getting my Linux Box to work and play well with my other Windows box has proven to be the toughest part of the transition.

Given my lack of experience in this realm, my transformation from Windows guy to Linux guy would simply not have been possible.

My only criticism is pretty minor. I use the Red Hat 9 distribution, so some of the directories where daemons and files are located are different. A bit of digging resolves any questions. While there are a bazillion different Linux/Samba distributions, I submit that Red Hat is a big enough player that merits a bit more real estate for users.

But back to the core message. This book is Definitive




Using Samba, 2nd Edition Review,  September 18 2003
Submitted by Chris in Illinois   [Respond | View]

Indespensible

As a Windows user in a 12-step recovery plan, I had a lot to learn how real computing was done. Getting my Linux Box to work and play well with my other Windows box has proven to be the toughest part of the transition.

Given my lack of experience in this realm, my transformation from Windows guy to Linux guy would simply not have been possible.

My only criticism is pretty minor. I use the Red Hat 9 distribution, so some of the directories where daemons and files are located are different. A bit of digging resolves any questions. While there are a bazillion different Linux/Samba distributions, I submit that Red Hat is a big enough player that merits a bit more real estate for users.

But back to the core message. This book is Definitive




Using Samba, 2nd Edition Review,  September 18 2003
Submitted by Chris in Illinois   [Respond | View]

Indespensible

As a Windows user in a 12-step recovery plan, I had a lot to learn how real computing was done. Getting my Linux Box to work and play well with my other Windows box has proven to be the toughest part of the transition.

Given my lack of experience in this realm, my transformation from Windows guy to Linux guy would simply not have been possible.

My only criticism is pretty minor. I use the Red Hat 9 distribution, so some of the directories where daemons and files are located are different. A bit of digging resolves any questions. While there are a bazillion different Linux/Samba distributions, I submit that Red Hat is a big enough player that merits a bit more real estate for users.

But back to the core message. This book is Definitive




Using Samba, 2nd Edition Review,  September 18 2003
Submitted by Chris in Illinois   [Respond | View]

Indespensible

As a Windows user in a 12-step recovery plan, I had a lot to learn how real computing was done. Getting my Linux Box to work and play well with my other Windows box has proven to be the toughest part of the transition.

Given my lack of experience in this realm, my transformation from Windows guy to Linux guy would simply not have been possible.

My only criticism is pretty minor. I use the Red Hat 9 distribution, so some of the directories where daemons and files are located are different. A bit of digging resolves any questions. While there are a bazillion different Linux/Samba distributions, I submit that Red Hat is a big enough player that merits a bit more real estate for users.

But back to the core message. This book is Definitive




Using Samba, 2nd Edition Review,  September 18 2003
Submitted by Chris in Illinois   [Respond | View]

Indespensible

As a Windows user in a 12-step recovery plan, I had a lot to learn how real computing was done. Getting my Linux Box to work and play well with my other Windows box has proven to be the toughest part of the transition.

Given my lack of experience in this realm, my transformation from Windows guy to Linux guy would simply not have been possible.

My only criticism is pretty minor. I use the Red Hat 9 distribution, so some of the directories where daemons and files are located are different. A bit of digging resolves any questions. While there are a bazillion different Linux/Samba distributions, I submit that Red Hat is a big enough player that merits a bit more real estate for users.

But back to the core message. This book is Definitive




Using Samba, 2nd Edition Review,  March 31 2003
Submitted by Chad Beers   [Respond | View]

Using Samba, second Edition, is comprehensive, concise, and generally what one would expect from Oreilly, quality documentation. As a Unix person, this book was extremely helpful in making clear a subject that Microsoft seems to have taken great pains to obscure - SMB.

In response to the first reviewer, I could churn my own butter or make my own ketchup, but I don't. Others do it better than I and so I will continue to buy good documentation. Great book, I recommend it without reservation.

Chad Beers


Using Samba, 2nd Edition Review,  March 09 2003
Submitted by Tim O'Reilly   [Respond | View]

I wanted to reply to the comments of the preceding anonymous poster, who asked why we would publish a printed copy of documentation that is available for free online as the official documentation of the Samba project. Clearly the poster hasn't done his homework. We hired and paid people to write the book, and donated it to the Samba project as its official documentation. We had the cooperation of the core team to be sure, but without the efforts and funding of O'Reilly (including a substantial amount of time from one of our staff writers), this book wouldn't exist.

Even without that fact, though, there are many good reasons for printing and selling nicely bound copies of books that are available online.

In any event, anonymous, I think you owe us an apology.


Using Samba, 2nd Edition Review,  March 08 2003
Submitted by anonymous   [Respond | View]



This book have always been freely available as the official documentation to Samba, how dare you expect that people will pay for a copy of something that should have continued to be free.

My suggestion to anyone reading this is to get the first edition off the web and read the doc's and howto's available for free by using Google or any other good searchengine instead.

And if you can, use the linux documentation project<\a> instead of any o'reilly book in the future.<\P>

AND on a final note: <\P>

"Why?, Why did you do this?, don't you have enough money?"<\B>

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