Using Samba, Second Edition

Chapter 2. Installing Samba on a Unix System

Now that you know what Samba can do for you and your users, it’s time to get your own network set up. Let’s start with the installation of Samba. When dancing the samba, one learns by taking small steps. It’s just the same when installing Samba; we need to teach it step by step. This chapter will help you start off on the right foot.

For illustrative purposes, we will be installing the 2.2.6 version of the Samba server on a Linux system running Version 2.4 of the kernel. However, the installation steps are essentially the same for all the platforms Samba supports.

Bundled Versions

Samba is in such popular use that many Unix distributions come with it already installed. If you choose to use a bundled version of Samba, you can breeze through most of this chapter, but you’ll be stuck with the Samba version and compile-time options your vendor selected for you. That version of Samba can’t be any newer than the operating system release, so you’re likely to be pretty far behind the latest developments. On the other hand, you can be fairly sure that a bundled version has been installed properly, and perhaps it will take only a few simple modifications to your smb.conf file for you to be off and running. Samba is mature enough that you probably don’t need the latest release to meet your basic needs, so you might be perfectly happy running a bundled version.

If you choose this option, be aware that your Samba files, including the very important ...