Samba – Good Just Keeps Getting Better The new and not so new features available in Samba, and how they benefit your organization. Copyright 2002 © Dustin Puryear

Dustin Puryear Puryear Information Technology UNIX and Windows Server Consulting Website:

Presentation Objectives To learn more about operating Samba in Windows 2000 networks. To get a better understanding of how Samba should, and should not, be used based on current features and compatibility issues. Covers primarily Samba 2.2, with some notes about Samba 3.0.

What will actually be discussed: A brief, brief introduction to Samba. New and improved features available in Samba 2.2, and how they impact Windows 2000 integration, such as Dfs, better file locking support, MS-RPC based printing support, share administration, and more. What features aren’t available yet, such as actual Active Directory support, but will be available in Samba 3.0.

A Brief, Brief Introduction to Samba What is Samba? –SMB/CIFS File Server –Authentication Server –Bridge between UNIX and Windows Networks –Runs under UNIX, VMS, Linux, FreeBSD, and more!

Where Can I Get Samba? –The latest release is always available at –Most Linux distributions now include Samba as a default install option. –Samba is available in the FreeBSD ports tree. –Most other UNIX vendors offer Samba

Who Owns Samba? –The community owns Samba – the software is governed by the GNU Public License (GPL) –Samba is developed by the Samba Team, a group of individuals that are committed to on-going support and development of the software.

What are some real benefits of Samba? Companies are free to use Samba in any way that benefits them, as long as they do not attempt to control the source code. Samba works on both low- and high-end hardware, and has been ported to many platforms. Samba is fast and stable. Need I say more?

Configuration is both simple and easily reproducible; Samba is configured using a consistent configuration file that can be easily copied, backed up, or altered via scripted solutions.

Major Performance and Compatibility Improvements Samba now offers full support for Windows opportunistic locking (oplocks); this means greatly increased compatibility with Win32 applications. Full support for locking files across both SMB/CIFS and NFS file sharing on Linux and IRIX (and the potential for others). This means that Samba will continue to show strength in integrating UNIX and Windows file sharing networks.

Most Samba PDC quirks have been fixed. With proper use of replication, a Samba controlled domain can be enterprise-grade. Profiling support now added, which allows administrators to profile performance on key production servers as needs dictate.

Samba Printing Services The Samba Team has completed support for MS-RPC based printing. What does this mean? –Printer drivers can be automatically downloaded to Windows 9X, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP clients. –New printer drivers can be installed via the Windows NT/2000 Add Printer Wizard or using the Imprints utility. –Access Control Lists (ACL) for printers.

–Print jobs can easily be controlled at the workstation. –Remember, Samba should raw print to printers, and allow Windows clients to format printer output.

Samba and Administration Administration, especially in a large environment, is a crucial concern when using any software, especially server software! Samba continues to use an easy to read and parse configuration file that can be easily reproduced to others servers or as part of the backup process. This leads to simplified management that can easily be automated.

The web-based administration tool, SWAT, is still being actively developed and makes configuration a snap! Unfortunately, no enterprise wide configuration tool is available at this time. (Market opportunity?)

What about permissions? –File and directory permissions can be changed by file owners using native Windows tools via the Security tab. –Samba 2.2 now supports Access Control Lists (ACL’s) as long as the underlying operating system and file system (e.g., Linux with the appropriate patches) supports ACL’s.

New Feature! Distributed File System (Dfs) Support Still no word on why Microsoft doesn’t capitalize acronyms correctly. Samba 2.2 does support Dfs. Dfs configuration is extremely easy: 1.Create [dfs] section in Samba configuration file 2.Create a directory specific to your Dfs root 3.Create a symlink representing a Dfs junction

New Feature! Samba Offers an Excellent Single Sign-On (SSO) Solution SSO can be offered using the Winbind service, which is currently available separately from Samba. Winbind can be integrated into any PAM-based security authentication and authorization system, such as Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD. As a PAM, Winbind can be used with any PAM- aware application, such as login, FTP, and Apache.

So what is the situation with Active Directory? Samba 2.2 does not support Active Directory (AD). There is excellent news on the horizon—AD support is being tested in Samba 3.0, the next major release of Samba.

Account Management Samba continues to support authentication against a PDC, such as Windows NT or Windows Samba 2.2 can authenticate against an LDAP database!

Still no Active Directory (AD) support in Samba 2.2! Fortunately, a solution is on the horizon – support for AD is being tested in Samba 3.0. You can test the beta code for yourself by checking out Samba 3.0 from CVS. There is still no real support for trust relationships between domains, but work is underway for Samba 3.0. But, can this be solved with the right use of LDAP already?

Closing Words For those that want Samba to be fully integrated into an Active Directory network, Samba 3.0 will be the solution. For now though, support is still being developed. Samba 2.2 continues to offer reliability and cost-effectiveness, which translates into an excellent product that is used around the world! Samba is FAST!