Essential Mac OS X Panther Server Administration

Chapter 16. Windows File Services

Apple Server products are not deployed in a homogeneous world consisting solely of Mac OS X-based clients. The opposite is true—in most cases, Apple’s products are minority players, and in many environments interoperability with Windows clients and infrastructures is probably the single most important set of features of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. Along these lines, Apple has bundled Samba—a highly successful open source package for providing a variety of native services to Windows clients. Samba in Mac OS X though differs in several aspects to Samba on other platforms. This chapter focuses both on those differences and on the infrastructures Apple has put into place to both integrate Samba with the rest of Mac OS X Server and simplify its management.

Managing Windows Services: Server Admin

Global options for Windows Services can be managed and monitored using Server Admin, in the Windows section of the selected server. Since Windows services (aside from having a different constituency) serve much the same purpose as AFP, you’ll notice that the two have similar options. Displaying a summary that is similar to that of many other services in Server Admin, Overview (seen in Figure 16-1) lists the current number of accesses and the status of both guest access and logging, along with the service’s start time.

Figure 16-1. The Overview pane supplies ...