Linux Term

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I was pretty bored this afternoon and i decided to research something.. LINUX!! Notebly linux admin.. and i wanted to ask a Q:

What exactly is Samba? From what i have read i assume its the linux/unix equivlent of a DNS or DC in the MS World?

Thanks!
PS be gentle with the linux terms im just reading no knowledge of the 'other' OS!!

 

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http://us1.samba.org/samba/what_is_samba.html

My understanding of samba is that it allows different platforms to comminucate with each other.

It allows a 'Non Windows' system to communicate with a Windows system.

More detailed explanations will follow I'm sure!

 

A Samba server takes it name from the smb protocol which Windows computers use to communicate over the network. The Samba server itself is a file and print server.

As a file and print server it can be used with several levels of security. It can be integrated into an Active Directory domain so that Windows users are transparently authenticated through the Domain Controller. It can also be used in an NT4 type domain. Security can also be set up as "User" security in which you must have a user name and password on the Linux machine but can still read and write file from a Windows machine. Lastly, it can be set up as "share" security which is basically wide open. Anyone on the network can read and/or write to the share.

I've set up a Samba server using "user" permissions and one integrated into a AD domain. That last one is really cool. The Windows users see the shares in network neighborhood just like they do with shares from a Windows file server, but if they don't have the correct permissions--don't belong to the Domain user group that has been given permissions on the Samba server--they are denied access just as they would be to Windows share.

If they do have the correct permissions and they have never logged onto the Samba server before it can be configured so they are also automagically given a "/home" directory on the Samba server.

It's cool to watch how this all works with a sniffer. If you run one on the Samba server you can see it get the user name from the client machine and then access the Domain Controller to check permissions. Once that is done you can see it send the data to the client machine.

Printer sharing works the same way.

Samba is very cool technology.... I can see absolutely no reason to spend $$ on Windows licences for file servers. Samba works great and can be configured from a web browser using Webmin.

 

Thanks freddy!

 

Nice explanation Freddy

 

I have to point out that I left out a very important Samba functionality in post on Samba. It can also be used as a Domain Controller/ldap server for Windows workstations. It won't equal AD yet, but the developers are still working at it.... The last I looked into it it's about the equivalent of a NT 4 domain controller.

 

Interesting. I use Samba on my FreeBSD box just to share files. I hadn't looked at other stuff for ages.

Perhaps it is time I did.

Harry.

 

so you cant lets say add it to a win2k or 2k3 domain yet?

 

No. They are having to reverse engineer what MS did so it's slow going....

 

The subject seemed familiar and I realized I had read about it elsewhere:

http://www.linux-tutorial.info/article-1530--0-0.html

http://www.linux-tutorial.info/article-1180--0-0.html

http://rage.net/ldap/

http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1563

 

Trip,

I don't know if you noticed or not, but the newest information in the rage.net and securityfocus.com links is going on 3-4 years old now. I don't believe AD4Unix is under active development any more and rage.net site's last news update was in 1999. Any instructions from the securityfocus article for using Samba as a domain controller are completely invalid anymore as the article was written for Samba 2 not Samba 3. There is a huge amount of difference between these two versions of Samba. Samba 3 is much advanced from Samba 2. It's much easier to work with.

 

Sorry, Freddy. Mea Culpa. Wasn't paying attention.