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Using Samba, 3rd Edition
book

Using Samba, 3rd Edition

by Gerald Carter, Jay Ts, Robert Eckstein
January 2007
Intermediate to advanced
450 pages
15h 1m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Using Samba, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1. An Introduction to Samba

Samba has been the subject of many cute descriptions in the past, some of which might have included a dancing penguin carrying a Microsoft Windows logo. We have been guilty of these things ourselves at one time or another. Although these pictures and descriptions can make great opening lines for magazine articles, they don’t have the substance to sell IT shops on the elegance with which this piece of software can solve the very complex interopability problems faced by environments composed of Macintosh, Microsoft, and Unix (or Unix-like) systems. If we had to come up with a one-line executive summary to justify the existence of Samba, we would say, “Samba is a software suite that allows a Unix-based system to appear and function as a Microsoft Windows server when viewed by other systems on a network.”

There are many components to Samba. Each of the pieces operate together to implement both the client and server portion of the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol. CIFS is the network protocol used by Microsoft operating systems for remote administration and to access shared resources such as files and printers. Despite the name, CIFS is neither a filesystem nor suitable for the Internet. It is, however, the protocol of choice in Windows networks.

There are several reasons to use Samba instead of Windows Server. As many experienced network administrators can testify, Samba provides day-in and day-out reliability, scalability, and flexibility. ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596007698Errata Page