What’s New in Samba 2.0?
Samba 2.0 was an eagerly-awaited package. The big additions to Samba 2.0 are more concrete support for NT Domains and the new Samba Web Administration Tool (SWAT), a browser-based utility for configuring Samba. However, there are dozens of other improvements that were introduced in the summer and fall of 1998.
NT Domains
Samba’s support for NT Domains (starting with version 2.0.x) produced a big improvement: it allows SMB servers to use its authentication mechanisms, which is essential for future NT compatibility, and to support NT domain logons . Domain logons allow a user to log in to a Windows NT domain and use all the computers in the domain without logging into them individually. Previous to version 2.0.0, Samba supported Windows 95/98 logon services, but not NT domain logons. Although domain logons support is not complete is Samba 2.0, it is partially implemented.
Ease of Administration
SWAT, the Samba Web Administration Tool, makes it easy to set up a server and change its configuration, without giving up the simple text-based configuration file. SWAT provides a graphical interface to the resources that Samba shares with its clients. In addition, SWAT saves considerable experimentation and memory work in setting up or changing configurations across the network. You can even create an initial setup with SWAT and then modify the file later by hand, or vice versa. Samba will not complain.
On the compilation side, GNU autoconf is now used to make the ...