Samba News in Users

The Samba Team is looking for people to help keep our user community information current, covering development news, releases, general news, and events. The scope of the positions will be to:

• Gather stories, summaries, and content for the bi-weekly Samba Mashup Report (community newsletter)
• Work on the active content at http://news.samba.org/

We are looking initially for two volunteers to help us. If you are interested in helping, please send a short mail to web-editor at samba dot org describing why you think you would be a good match.

HOWTO Forge has another HOWTO on configuring aq Samba PDC using OpenLDAP. This time it is about Samba running on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbons). From the article:

This document is a step by step guide for configuring Ubuntu 7.10 as a Samba Domain Controller with an LDAP backend (OpenLDAP). The point is to configure a server that can be comparable, from a central authentication point of view, to a Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller. The end result will be a server with an LDAP directory for storing user, group, and computer accounts.

You can read the complete article at www.howtoforge.com.

SearchEnterpriseLinux is running a summary of the Linuxworld SF 2007 session, "Samba FAQ: When Good Software Does Bad Things". The article begins with:

The next time a user comes knocking with an Access Denied error message and blames it on Samba, tell him to slow down. Most of the time, it's not Samba's fault, said Samba release manager Jerry Carter. "Our motto is 'Bug for bug, feature for feature, we are completely compatible with Microsoft Windows,''" he said.

Linux-Watch has published a how to on setting up Samba for a home network. The premise of the article is found here:

In 2007, anyone, and I mean anyone, can set up a computer to work as a simple file server with Linux and Samba. If you Google around on the Web, you'll find many guides on how to do it.

Citing that most online guides focus on command line usage and manually editing smb.conf, this how to focuses on using the native configuration tools within your Linux distribution (namely the Ubuntu derivate Linux Mint). Though the intsructions here are specific to Linux Mint, anyone running KDE would benefit. Really, it's a good beginner's guide period. Pass along the link to those new to Samba.

Howtoforge has an article on configuring a CentOS server running Samba as a member of a Windows 2003 domain. An excerpt from the HOWTO says:

The intent of this article is to show you how to configure your Linux machine and Samba server to participate in a Windows 2003 Active Directory domain as a Member Server using Kerberos authentication. This involves using the security = ADS security mode in Samba.

Check out the complele HOWTO for more details.

Port 25 has an interview with David Holder on Samba, IPv6 and Windows/Linux Interoperability. There is audio of the interview, plus links to slides from David's talk from SambaXP.

Here's a little teaser from the post:

One of the most informative sessions I attended was led by Dr. David Holder, an expert on IP networking and Windows/Linux interoperability. Specifically, he focuses on the IPv6 protocol, implementation, and interop, where he sees great opportunities for improved service levels in a range of applications and environments, but also sees a coming wave of interoperability problems between IPv6 implementations on various platforms.

nixCraft has a posted tutorial called Samba share permissions simplified. The article does a good job of navigating the relationship between file system permissions and Samba's config.

It's a short and sweet tutorial and worth a read, especially for new users or those needing a clear and focused refresher on how permissions work in Samba.

Sys Admin, the journal for Unix and Linux systems administrators, has a quiz to test your knowledge of Samba. Questions range from "Which of the following commands is used to reference the static LMHOSTS file?" to "Within Samba, what are the default permissions applied as a directory security mask?"

It's all multiple choice and quite fun. Take the Samba quiz and see how you do.

Linux.com has posted a quick and dirty Samba setup article. The article begins:

If you are looking for a simple, affordable home file server, or need more disk space on your office network, a Linux server with Samba is the way to go. Linux along with Samba offers a stable, secure environment that is available at no cost, along with features such as remote administration, immunity to Windows viruses, and the ability to run on low-end machines.

The article is a nice, quick intro to getting started with Samba. This would be something nice to share with people new to Samba to help get them started.

Jerry Carter speaks in a recent LinuxWorld podcast about some of the new stuff going into current Samba releases. From the podcast's overview:

With the latest Samba, you can populate one group on a Linux system with some members from the local system, others from Microsoft Active Directory. Since it works a lot like local groups in Microsoft Windows, now Linux and Windows administrators will be able to share the task of managing users and groups.

The podcast is short and offers a heads up about ongoing work in Samba3 and serves as a preview of Jerry's talk at LinuxWorld's Open Solutions Summit in Februrary.

Search Opensource has an article on the Samba Team's current work with Samba4. Our own Andrew Bartlett is interviewed extensively throughout the piece.

"We believe that just because a company may choose to run Microsoft Windows as a desktop OS [operating system], they should not be compelled to run Microsoft's servers," said Andrew Bartlett, a member of the Samba Team, a group of about 30 people from all over the world who contribute regularly to Samba.

Samba 4 is about expansion. It expands Samba beyond its Windows client-based file and print sharing roots into new roles by bringing greater Active Directory (AD) functionality than Samba 3 offers. Greater authentication and a new role as a login server are also coming.

Linux Magazine has published a first look at Samba4 (in PDF). This article examines features of the first Samba4 technology preview release from back in January. The work on Kerberos and LDB in Samba4 are highlighted as well as some of the new SWAT features.

Linux Magazine makes the article available for private use without charge.

http://wiki.samba.org/ is now online. This new Samba wiki is available for both users and developers alike. The wiki provides a means for the Samba community to provide dynamic or temporary documentation or to provide other relevant information.

The Samba Team wishes to thank Craig White who has volunteered to act as standing editor to get the Samba wiki on its feet. So feel free to start adding content. This wiki will only be as good or useful as you, the community, make it.

Howto Forge has a nice article on Samba file sharing with Ubuntu. The piece is targeted at small workgroups and makes for a nice introduction to Samba and Ubuntu. The article starts with an Ubuntu install and walks a user through the process of installing the OS, installing and configuring Samba, and adding users and shares.

There are a lot of screen shots here, which makes the tutorial easy to follow. Certainly, this is Ubuntu specific, but it's nice to see a walk through the entire process of setting up a file server from scratch.

For the complete HOWTO see SAMBA (Domain Controller) Server For Small Workgroups With Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger".

Samba Team member Tim Potter has written an article on using Samba with multiple network interfaces. The piece is a nice write up on how to set smb.conf parameters for multi-interface servers. From the introduction:

Let's assume that we have a server with two network interfaces. Say that one interface, eth0 connects to the company network 10.0.0.0/8, and eth1 connects to 192.168.1.0/24, a small private network within the company. For one reason or another, we want shares exported by Samba to be available on the private network eth1, but not visible to the rest of the organisation via eth0. The machine in question may be a firewall, gateway or plays some other sensitive role. In other configurations, you might want to avoid SMB connections over your PPP or wireless connection, for performance reasons.

For the rest of the article, see Multiple Network Interfaces with Samba.

SearchOpenSource.com is running a series of articles on Managing Samba by the Samba Team's John H. Terpstra. For part one, see Windows network identity basics. Part two is on User rights and privileges. John's goal in writing this series is to:

provide a better understanding of the relationship between Windows networking accounts and their equivalent on the Unix or Linux server that is running Samba.

Visit the links above for parts one and two in the series, and keep an eye out for forthcoming articles on: the creation of a network-wide remote management infrastructure, use of the pdbedit utility to manage user accounts and to configure network security settings, and the use of various remote management tools.

Linux Magazine is running an article on network browsing with KDE. The piece is nice little HOWTO on using KDE tools for browsing. From the article:

On a network of just Windows machines, connecting to file shares is a fairly easy process: just click on the "My Network" or "Network Neighborhood" icon, click on a nearby server or workstation with a file share, and away you go.

However, on a network of Linux and Windows machines, connecting a Linux box to a Windows server can still require some manual configuration to get file sharing between the two operating systems working just the way you want it to.

The article then continues with a step by step walk through of installation and configuration. For the rest of the HOWTO, see SMB Browsing with KDE.

Tomasz Chmielewski writes:

I wrote a little HOWTO on integrating a working Samba/OpenLDAP setup with Kolab.

Kolab is a secure, scalable and reliable Free Software Groupware Solution. Its users can view and edit common calendars, address books, tasks, notes, and more.

This means it can add a great value to your existing Samba setup. Your Samba users, using the same credentials, will share the same contacts, which means a global address book for you company. They could use the same calendar, so that their tasks could be planned better and more easily.

Users unfamiliar with Kolab can think of its features as similar to Exchange.

For Tomasz's article, see http://wpkg.org/kolab/.

If you have written an article or HOWTO on Samba, please go to our story submission form and let us hear from you.

Really Linux, a "Website for Beginning Linux Users," has a nice article introducing those new to Linux to file serving with Samba. All the basics are covered here: configuring the server, adding shares, adding users, and connecting from Windows clients.

Integrating Fedora Linux into a Windows network is reasonable and easy as long as you use the SAMBA utilities. [...] Once integrated a Linux server looks and acts exactly like any other server on a Windows intranet. You will have the ability to drag and drop files, view server contents and directories using Windows File Manager, and even edit files on a Linux server from any Windows desktop.

As the introduction mentions, the HOWTO is specific to Fedora, so the examples are with native Fedora management tools. There are links to Samba documentation and a nice little troubleshooting section. This article would make an excellent resource for those just getting started with Linux or Samba.

For the complete piece, see Linux In a Windows Network with SAMBA.

Small Business Computing is currently running a nice Samba article. The piece is an overview of Samba, emphasizing why small businesses should consider Samba for file and print serving.

You should be thinking about converting if you are interested in substantial hardware and software savings. If all you need is file and printer services, Windows Server 2003 (Small Business Server or Standard Edition) starting at $500 per server, not to mention the fairly hefty hardware requirements, is not cheap. One of my customers was able to recycle a few obsolete Windows Server machines as Linux/Samba file servers for essentially no money.

There is also some good information here on Samba's origins and an introduction to Samba features. This might be a nice piece to point people to if they're considering Samba for the first time.

See Do the Samba with Linux File Servers for the complete article.

Samba Team member John H. Terpstra has written an overview of ACLs for the system administrator dealing with both Windows and Unix (through Samba, of course). The article can be found on searchenterpriselinux.com and is a nice outline of the differences between Unix file system permissions and Windows' ACLs. Those looking for an accessible and understandable introduction to the topic should check out John's piece.

From the abstract:

The parallel to this is that the Windows networking engineer will solve all file and directory access challenges with Windows ACLs, and the UNIX administrator will find this predilection both unnatural and awkward. Despite these opposing perspectives it is necessary to deal with them in an environment where Samba is used to provide Windows file and print services.

For more, please see Samba-3: Windows file and directory ACLs.

Linux Journal has posted a Linux reading list. The list is heavy on Samba and LDAP info. It may prove useful to those just getting started with Samba, or those looking for additional info on using Samba as a PDC.

For more, see A Reading List for Linux in the Classroom.

Director Robert Rodriguez's Sin City will be the first film in theater's to be filmed in "a digital format supporting full-bandwidth RGB," according to this article from LinuxDevices. And Samba was right in the middle of it all, as part of SpectSoft's Linux-powered DDR (disk drive recorder).

According to SpectSoft, many high-end movie studios today use Linux for "everything," from rendering tools to proprietary compositing tools, because of its stability, customizability, and low system overhead. "Linux has won not only renderfarm servers, but the artist desktops of the top studios. It's hard to find a large studio that does not rely upon Linux as its primary animation and special effects OS," according to a SpectSoft brochure.

Samba gets a mention in the article for its role in sharing the file system on the DDR where shots were stored. For more, see the full article Legendary indy director uses Linux to edge out ILM.

Linux Journal is running part two in a series of articles on Linux servers that have to support Windows clients. The article has a decent section on how to configure Samba for file and print sharing. The piece works well as a quick and easy introduction to Samba's role within a Linux server. This is the kind of piece you can share with friends, co-workers, and fellow sys admins considering Samba.

The piece begins:

This article series covers the development of a Linux-based server that supports a number of workstations running the Microsoft Windows operating system in the computer laboratory of a 55+ RV Resort in Mesa, Arizona. Part I covered the background of our organization, the establishment of our Linux system and the rules for our iptables firewall. This article covers network functions such as IP address serving, a cache-only name server, an intranet Web server and print and file services using the service message block (SMB) protocol.

For the complete article, see Linux in a Windows Workstation Environment, Part II: Local Network Support.

SerNet has been providing Samba packages for Novell's SLES and Red Hat's RHEL for some time now, but the company has launched http://enterprisesamba.com/ to provide a central access point to Samba packages for enterprise ready Linux distributions.

From the new site:

Several hundred downloads a week of those packages for each distribution show the importance of this offering (also proven by Google's page rank for this server: Look for "ftp.sernet.de" here or here).

For Cebit 2005 SerNet launches this web site that offers detailed information about the provided packages and additional services.

Visit http://enterprisesamba.com/ for more information.

Samba, being the network tool that it is, is most often spoken of in the context of an enterprise environment. However, lots of people find Samba handy in everyday use, like sharing files or printers with a spouse on a home network, or using Samba to power a Linux music server. Several people have written us here at news.samba.org to share similar stories of the usefulness of Samba in all sorts of work.

Vinicius Kamakura writes about how Samba helps him overcome being tied to a Windows application in his line of web development:

I've samba-shared Apache's document root on my Linux box so I can access it directly from my code editor in Windows; it speeds up my work so much, since I'm able to edit the live source files! Can't imagine my life without it.

Patrick Blake told us of the role his Samba server plays while he's gaming:

Over the past 3 years, I learned how during lan parties I could quickly swap, configure, and setup an impressive amount of quick serving shares over a number of network devices.

Samba not only enables better game play, but Patrick concludes, "now Samba helps protect my network." Certainly, Samba offers lots of safe and reliable possibilities, even when dealing with gaming, music, websites, and home networks.

If you have a testimonial about your experience with Samba, please go to our story submission form and let us hear from you.

Suresh Kumar Sami writes that his company, Zahid Tractor and Heavy Machinery, working with Saudi Business Machines (SBM) and IBM, has moved entirely to servers running Linux and Samba. The press release begins:

Zahid Tractor and Heavy Machinery Company Limited has implemented the server technology that is revolutionising the computing world. Rolling out Linux across its systems spanning the Kingdom with the help of Saudi Business Machines (SBM), the general marketing and services representative of IBM WTC in Saudi Arabia, Zahid Tractor is leading a wave of change that is allowing organisations to implement the most powerful and secure computer systems without having to pay exorbitant licensing fees. By replacing its Microsoft Windows servers with LINUX, Zahid Tractors has reduced its server technology costs by as much as 25%, and demonstrated the value, flexibility and security of open-source software.

For more, see the full press release.

Alan Horkan, Systems Manager at babelmedia.com writes:

Babelmedia is a specialist software test/development house providing services to the computer games industry for console, PC, mobile, TV games developers. We specialise in QA and localisation and have test facilities in UK, US and India.

I recently have taken on a mission to migrate some services away from Microsoft technology. We have now been using SAMBA on a couple of our file servers in AD mode for three months with no regrets. It's as fast and reliable as its Windows counterparts. I have no hesitation now to use SAMBA for file serving to any platform.

If you have a testimonial about your experience with Samba, please go to our story submission form and let us hear from you.

Thinking about a move to Samba? Transitions can be frightening, but good ones are never forgotten. Consider the following testimonials.

Hannu Tikka writes:

In october 2003, Raahe Business College migrated from Novell NetWare 5.1 to Samba 3. Migration was quite smooth, of course at the start there were a few issues, partly with the Samba version at that time, but mainly they were about administrators limited knowledge about windows domain environment. Our environment is ~200 w2k workstations, ~400 users with roaming profiles, PDC and BDC samba-servers with replicated OpenLDAP backend.

We have moved to linux-servers with small steps. Starting with web services at 2000, a year after that mail services and finally the Samba migration. All the time we have been using linux systems the main impression has been excellent reliability, performance and flexibility. Now we have been running our samba-system without any problems for months and we are very satisfied and amazed for the work of the Samba Team.

Also, Ernesto Arturo Valderrama Blum from CIAT, a small engineering center in Queretaro, Mexico had good things to say about his experiences with a Samba migration. He writes:

When we started, we chose Linux and Samba, because we had a very small budget. We had around 10,000 US for all our IT specific needs (hardware and software). After buying our network switches, we had zero money left.

We didn't have enough money for a Windows server, so we used Linux Redhat 5.2 Cartman and Samba 1.8 or 2.1 (I don't remember which) to serve 50 HPUX workstations and 20 PCs.

We quickly discovered how easily Samba is configured to suit our needs, and its stability. Now we have around 30 Linux servers, most of them with Samba, serving 600 machines. One of our most heavily used servers has 383 days up and running continuously, interrupting the Samba service nly briefly when we upgrade samba.

I'm very grateful to the Samba Team for these 5 years I have been using Samba. I don't know how things could have been if we hadn't chosen Samba 5 years ago, but I know we are where we are now in part because of you.

And we're just glad people continue to have such success using Samba. Thanks, Hannu and Ernesto, for sharing your stories.

If you have a testimonial about your experience with Samba, please go to our story submission form and let us hear from you.

Samba Team member John Terpstra has a Samba3 article on InformIT. The case study offers an "example of simple Samba network server architecture." Small to mid-sized offices looking to migrate to Samba might be interested in this piece:

The office of Abmas Accounting Inc. is a 40-year-old family-run business. There are nine permanent computer users. The network clients were upgraded two years ago. All computers run Windows 2000 Professional. This year the server will be upgraded from an old Windows NT4 server (actually running Windows NT4 Workstation, which worked fine as there were fewer than 10 users) that has run in workgroup (Stand-Alone) mode, to a new Linux server running Samba.

The office does not want a Domain Server. Mr. Alan Meany wants to keep the Windows 2000 Professional clients running as workgroup machines so that any staff member can take a machine home and keep working. It has worked well so far and your task is to replace the old server.

Read the full article here. Link via Linux Today.

The National Library Board of Singapore (NLB) has completed the migration of 52 Windows NT Domain Controllers to a Samba-based solution in all its 26 sites nationwide. The migration exercise was initiated primarily to counter the impending support end-of-life for Windows NT by 1 January 2005, as well as to solve existing issues of non-trusted domains, due to the blocking of NetBios ports across the sites, and the lack of centralized control over the 26 sites.

At the core of the solution designed and implemented by Resolvo Systems is a Linux Master Authentication Server, comprised of Samba and OpenLDAP and set up at the Network Operation Centre (NOC). Slave servers with a similar setup are implemented across the rest of the sites. It is through the NOC that centralized control and administration of each location's domain controller is accomplished.

The migration implementation started in March 2004 and took 4 months to complete. In total, more than 1000 Windows workstations are migrated to the new architecture.

For more info, see Resolvo' Case Profile (PDF file).

Story by Chan Ying Yip.