Samba (software)

Samba is a free software implementation of Microsoft's networking system released under the GNU General Public License. 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 GNU/Linux, Solaris, and the BSD variants, including Apple's Mac OS X Server (it was added to the OS X workstation edition with version 10.2). It is standard on virtually all distributions of Linux and is commonly included as a basic system service on other Unix-based systems as well.

History

Samba was originally developed for Unix by Andrew Tridgell at the Australian National University, originally by reverse-engineering the protocol used by DEC PATHWORKS server software using a packet sniffer. Tridgell later discovered that the protocol was largely identical to that used by other network server systems, including Microsoft's LAN Manager software, and he decided to focus on Microsoft network compatibility after that.

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). 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 (grep -i 's.*m.*b.*' /usr/dict/words).

Features

Samba is an implementation of dozens of services and a dozen protocols, including NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT), SMB (which is also named CIFS), 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) 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 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 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.

Relations

There is a fork of Samba which has significant architectural and implementation differences in the key areas of the NT Domain Services known as Samba TNG.

Related software

External links

Free file transfer software | Unix software

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History

Features

Relations

Related software

See also

External links