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.
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
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