SambaErik Turner

CSIS 4490

Linux Admin & Security

Dr. Hoganson

What is Samba?Samba is an implementation of the SMB protocol (Server

Message Block) that can be run on almost every variant of UNIX in existence.

In short, Samba offers a simple, cost-effective solution for management of home directories, file sharing, and share networked printers.

As with most Linux packages, Samba is open source, written in C, and its free.

History of Samba

The Samba project began in 1991 by Andrew Tridgell in Australia while he was earning his PhD. Andrew needed to create a fileserver program for his local network that supported DEC (an odd protocol from Digital Pathworks).

Andrew later found out that the DEC protocol was SMB and his program could be used as a fileserver for the Unix environment and later other environments.

Interest in his SMB fileserver grew with the popularity of Linux, and it was renamed Samba

On a side note…

Microsoft has also contributed to the development of SMB, which is still evolving today. Microsoft's implementation of it is the CIFS protocol, which will be used in future Windows products. The two terms are used interchangeably, so you will often see the protocol written as "SMB/CIFS."

What can Samba do?

It is useful because Microsoft clients can use this protocol to access files and printers located on your UNIX box just as though it were a native Windows server.

Therefore, a Samba-enabled Unix machine can masquerade as a server on your Microsoft network and offer the following services:

What can Samba do? (cont)

• Share printers installed on both the server and its clients

• Assist clients with Network Neighborhood browsing

• Authenticate clients logging onto a Windows domain

• Allows UNIX computers access to NT files

• Act as a gateway for synchronizing UNIX and Windows NT passwords

• Act as a print gateway between PCs and UNIX printers

• Act as a Net BIOS name server

• And more!

Behind the Scenes

Samba is configured from a single properties file called ‘smb.conf’.

[global]

workgroup = SIMPLE

[test]

comment = For testing only

path = /export/samba/test

read only = no

guest ok = yes

SWAT

Samba 2.0 and up includes SWAT, a GUI for Samba configuration

In this example, we can change the same variables from the previous slide.

Behind the Scenes

Samba operates in Unix as a set of daemon programs. They can view them with the Unix netstat and smbstatus commands.

# smbstatus

Samba version 2.0.4

Service uid gid pid machine

----------------------------------------------

network davecb davecb 7470 phoenix (192.168.220.101) Sun May 16

network davecb davecb 7589 chimaera (192.168.220.102) Sun May 16

Locked files:

Pid DenyMode R/W Oplock Name

Basic Setup

A simple network setup with a samba server with one Unix server and two Microsoft clients sharing a printer.

Basic Network Neighborhood

The network neighborhood directory. Our Unix computer ‘Hydra’ is seen as a regular server on the network.

Sources

• www.samba.org• Samba documentation (from samba.org)• Teach yourself samba in 24 hours