Samba (software)

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Samba

Samba logo. The s, m, and b are in black to connote "SMB"
Developer:	The Samba Team
Latest release:	3.0.24 / February 5, 2007
Preview release:	4.0.0TP4 / January 31, 2007
OS:	Multiplatform
Use:	Remote Access
License:	GPL
Website:	http://www.samba.org/

Samba is a free software re-implementation of SMB/CIFS networking protocol, released under the GNU General Public License. The name Samba comes from inserting two vowels into the name of the standard protocol used by the Microsoft Windows network file system, "SMB" (Server Message Block).

As of version 3, Samba not only provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients but can also integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) or as a Domain Member. It can also be part of an Active Directory domain. Samba runs on most Unix and Unix-like systems, such as Linux, Solaris, and the BSD variants, including Apple's Mac OS X Server (which was added to the Mac OS X client in version 10.2). Samba is standard on nearly all distributions of Linux and is commonly included as a basic system service on other Unix-based operating systems as well.

1 History
2 Features
3 Related software
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Andrew Tridgell developed the first version of Samba Unix in 1992, at the Australian National University, using a packet sniffer to do network analysis of the protocol used by DEC PATHWORKS server software. "nbserver 1.5" was released in December 1993. Tridgell later discovered that the protocol was largely identical to that used by other network server systems, including Microsoft's LAN Manager software. He decided to focus on Microsoft network compatibility after that.

Samba was originally called smbserver. But, the name was changed because of a trademark notice from the company "Syntax," who sold a product named TotalNet Advanced Server, and also owned the trademark for "SMBserver." The name "Samba" was arrived at by running the Unix command grep through the system dictionary looking for words that contained the letters S, M, and B in that order (i.e. grep -i 's.*m.*b.*' /usr/share/dict/words).

[edit] Features

Samba is an implementation of dozens of services and a dozen protocols, including NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NBT), SMB, CIFS (an enhanced version of SMB), DCE/RPC or more specifically, MSRPC, the Network Neighborhood suite of protocols, a WINS server also known as a NetBIOS Name Server (NBNS), the NT Domain suite of protocols which includes NT Domain Logons, Secure Accounts Manager (SAM) database, Local Security Authority (LSA) service, NT-style printing service (SPOOLSS), NTLM and more recently Active Directory Logon which involves a modified version of Kerberos and a modified version of LDAP. All these services and protocols are frequently incorrectly referred to as just NetBIOS and/or SMB. Samba can also see and share printers.

Samba sets up network shares for chosen Unix directories (including all contained subdirectories). These appear to Microsoft Windows users as normal Windows folders accessible via the network. Unix users can either mount the shares directly as part of their file structure or, alternatively, can use a utility, smbclient (libsmb) installed with Samba to read the shares with a similar interface to a standard command line FTP program. Each directory can have different access privileges overlayed on top of the normal Unix file protections. For example: home directories would have read/write access for all known users, allowing each to access their own files. However they would still not have access to the files of others unless that permission would normally exist. Note that the netlogon share, typically distributed as a read only share from /etc/samba/netlogon, is the logon directory for user logon scripts.

Configuration is achieved by editing a single file (typically installed as /etc/smb.conf or /etc/samba/smb.conf). Samba can also provide user logon scripts and group policy implementation through poledit.

[edit] Related software

Samba TNG is a fork of Samba which has significant architectural and implementation differences in the key areas of the NT Domain Services.
LinNeighborhood
LDAP Account Manager
Kerberos protocol
Smb4K is the SMB/CIFS Share Browser for KDE.