Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Second Edition

Samba on Linux

Samba is a Unix/Linux daemon that can serve three purposes:

• Its primary purpose is to share directories from a Unix/Linux server with Windows workstations. The directories show up in the Windows File Explorer as if they were being shared from other Windows machines.
• It can also be set up as a network print server.
• It can also be set up as a Windows domain controller.

You can install Samba version 3 on a Linux server, and set it up to act as an old-style Windows NT domain controller. It's a rather complex procedure, and it takes a while. Once it's done, you can join both Linux and Windows machines to the domain and use the normal Windows user management utilities to manage users and groups.

One of the Linux community's Holy ...