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  1. Agustin's Linux Manual
  2. Networks & Servers
  3. About the Author
  4. Table of Contents
  5. IP Addresses Networks and Subnets
  6. Network Classes
  7. IP Address in Decimal Notation
  8. Sub-netting
  9. Designing Subnets
  10. Allocating Subnets
  11. Defining Host Addresses
  12. Variable Length Subnet Mask
  13. Routing Protocols
  14. Classless Internet Domain Routing
  15. Servers - Chapter 9
  16. Apache Web Server
  17. Configuring Apache
  18. Uploading Web Pages
  19. Apache Overview
  20. MIMEMagic
  21. DNS Servers
  22. Welcome to Webmin
  23. Creating the Master Domain
  24. Adding the Reverse Zone
  25. Querying the DNS server
  26. Adding Virtual Domain to DNS Server
  27. Reverse Zone for Virtual Zone
  28. Binding IP Address for Virtual Domain
  29. Virtual Web Hosting
  30. DNS Security Options
  31. FTP Server
  32. Securing the FTP Server
  33. Email Server
  34. Postfix Configuration
  35. Dealing with Identical Users
  36. Configuring Email Clients
  37. Configuring Outlook
  38. Samba Server
  39. Configuring SAMBA Server
  40. The smb.conf File
  41. smb.conf Analysis
  42. Adding Users to Samba

Samba server

Mounting domains under Linux to communicate with windows systems has become popular and because of Linux stability, it justifies the means.

But what is samba? It has nothing to do with music of course. Samba stands for Server Message Block after a long dispute. This is funny, and this is a short story about it. Originally, Apollo/HP created the so-called NCA (Network Computing Architecture).
But when it was needed to run over TCP/IP, it was submitted to the open group and became the DCE/RPC (Distributed Computing Environment Remote Procedure Calls).

Microsoft came along and wanted to implement this technology as their own MSRPC but didn't want to pay $20 dollars per seat to license this technology. See, Microsoft didn't want to pay $20 dollars but they do want us to pay that and more for their blue-screen of death. And for that reason the group continued the development and just left it as SMB. Throughout the years, many implementations of protocols attached to samba to run it over different type of networks until finally the predominant “Microsoft” marketed TCP to replace NetBios.

But as I said, a lot of disputes were around Samba. Samba allows the file and printer sharing and because of that, in 1996 Microsoft decided that it should include a word Internet into it, in other words Microsoft's standard wanted it to be CIFS (Common Internet File System). So currently the project is know as CFS/SMB; however you need to know that Microsoft abandoned the raw protocol in CFS in their product long ago because its basic design is flawed.

Because of this implication, Microsoft claim Intellectual Property Impairs in their license documentation. But far from this Intellectual blah! blah! The Samba team believes that the distribution terms in the GNU GPL, has proved a high degree of industry collaboration to build a high quality protocol to beneficiate not only the end user but Microsoft itself. Something that Microsoft can't understand.

Regardless of how big a firm is, they pay extravagant amounts of money to run Mix environment Windows and Linux systems, Even though, Microsoft does not offer technical support for samba; that doesn't mean that we can't do it. We may not own an MCSE certification; but “ ” we know their product better than they do.