Samba Black
Book Dominic Baines CoriolisOpen Press 582 pp, $49.99 USD ($74.99
CDN)
The most widely recognized package for Unix has got to be Samba.
To some it is a way of getting files transferred between Windows and
Unix, to others it is a way to save the expense and hassle of an NT server.
Samba has evolved from a quick hack to a robust package capable of emulating
a PDC and a WINS server along with it's file sharing duties. Along with this
explosion in features has come a wealth of literature on how to use Samba.
This book stands out in front of all of those for several
reasons.
This book is part of the Coriolis Black Book series. The Black
Book concept is one that stands out in the computer book field. It's a
book on theory and on troubleshooting. At the same time! The focus is on
problem solving, but I found it's written in such a way that you get a lot
of knowledge about the inner workings while going through the solutions.
Each chapter is divided into two sections, the first being called "In
Depth", and the second is "Immediate Solutions". Within the latter section,
several "How do I?" situations are explored with step by step resolutions.
This is by far the biggest part of the book. The "In Depth" sections
provide some background theory for the chapter.
Another thing that
sets this book apart from all the other Samba books is that it's not another
"How to get rid of NT using Samba" book. It's about NT and Windows, and how
to get them playing nicely with Unix, and vice-versa. Both the Windows side
of the equation and the Unix side are explored and documented. For
example, when talking about share permissions, the configuration for the
Samba server and screens hots from the Windows client are compared. The
author spends as much time talking about how to get a Unix box to access
shares on a Windows server as he does for a Unix server with a Windows
client. DNS, DHCP, and other issues that arise in an NT environment but that
aren't covered by Samba are also explained.
The book itself has 13
chapters, and 3 appendixes. Chapters 1 and 2 are an introduction and a
background on file sharing, respectively. Chapter 3 talks about obtaining,
compiling, and installing Samba. Another shining example of the thoroughness
in this book is this chapter. When talking about the compile time
authentication options, each one is explained and relevant parts of the
code are shown. The resulting binaries are explained along with their
compile time options. An in depth installation procedure for SWAT, a web
front end to Samba administration, is also provided.
In Chapter 4
we're into how to set up the machine to share out files. In a clear how-to
format, procedures such as "Setting up a share available to all users for
read access and to a few for write access" and "Mangled file names on a
Samba share" are solved. This is a very task oriented book, yet the reader
leaves with a greater understanding of the system as a whole rather than
that of the specific procedure. Common problems such as security modes
(user, share, server, domain) and password encryption are explained and
fixed.
Chapter 5 does much the same thing but for printer shares. Little
nuances that the Samba docs don't adequately explain, such as what the
[printer] share really does, and how to get Samba to use the resources
available on the system to make a printer list rather than the manual way in
NT, are brought to life. The Linux printing service is talked about here,
including how to get colour support and external filters working (ie to make
a normal printer support PostScript).
Chapters 6 and 7 walk through
how to use the client side of things, both from the Unix and Windows
perspective. Even though the Unix command line client can be complicated,
the author explains it with relative ease. This is another place where the
how to style of the Black Book series shines.
At this point other
books may be winding down, but this one still has six chapters to go.
Chapter 8 is all about browsing. It may as well been called "Everything you
ever wanted to know about browsing but were afraid to ask". Packet traces
are used to explain the process, and all the relevant Samba parameters are
dissected along with their effects on the whole works. The problems with
browsing across WAN links and subnets are explained along with their
solutions.
One of the more complex parts of Samba, domains, is the topic
of chapter 9. Everything from getting...
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