SAMBA - Get Zeta to dance with UNIX and Windows machines

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SAMBA - Zeta dancing with UNIX and Windows machines

Samba is an extremely useful networking tool for environments running computers with different operating systems (MacOS X, UNIX, Windows and Zeta).

Samba allows Windows users to share files and printers on a Zeta host (or UNIX host), and Zeta users (or UNIX users) to access resources shared by Windows systems.

Samba is a suite of UNIX applications that speak the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. The Microsoft Windows operating systems use SMB to perform client-server networking for file and printer sharing. By supporting this protocol, Samba enables computers running Zeta and UNIX to get in on the action, communicating with the same networking protocol as Microsoft Windows and appearing as another Windows system on the network from the prespective of a Windows client.

Although it might seem natural to use a Windows server to serve files and printers to a network containing Windows clients, there are good reasons for preferring a Samba server for the tasks. Samba has become a reliable software that runs stable operating systems, resulting fewer problems and a low cost of maintenance. The best thing of all is, that it is free.

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smbclient

The smbclient is a Terminal application, and it can for instance be used for browsing shares on servers, testing configurations, accessing shared printers and backing up shared data. The commnads for accessing shared directories are ftp-like:

Listing Services
$ smbclient -L <domain or workgroup>
The command will give us a list over the computers in the domain or workgroup.

Authenticating with smbclient
Quite often the Samba server will be set up with user-level security, and the smbclient would then need to supply a username and password to access the shared directories.

Samba Web Administration Tool (SWAT)

nmbd and smbd

Warning
To become a good Samba administrator, you need to know basic UNIX system and network administration, and a good understanding of Windows filesystem. You also need knowledge on how Samba fills in the "gray area" between UNIX and Windows.

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