Samba Introduction

Samba is a free software implementation of Microsoft's networking system. As of version 3, samba not only provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients but can also integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) or as a Domain Member. It can also be part of an Active Directory domain.

Samba runs on most Unix and Unix-like systems, such as GNU/Linux, Solaris, and the BSD variants, including Apple's Mac OS X Server; it was added to the OS X workstation edition with version 10.2.

The name samba comes from inserting two vowels into the name of the standard protocol used by the Microsoft Windows network file system, "SMB" (server message block). Samba was originally called smbserver but the name was changed because of a trademark notice from the company "Syntax" who sold a product named TotalNet advanced Server, and also owned the trademark for SMBserver.

Samba is an implementation of dozens of services and a dozen protocols, including NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NBT), SMB which is also named CIFS, DCE/RPC or more specifically, MSRPC, the Network Neighbourhood suite of protocols, a WINS server also known as a NetBIOS Name Server (NBNS), the NT Domain suite of protocols which includes NT Domain Logons, Secure Accounts Manager (SAM) database, Local Security Authority (LSA) service, NT-style printing service (SPOOLSS) and more recently Active Directory Logon which involves a modified version of Kerberos and a modified version of LDAP. The list goes on, and is frequently lumped in people's heads as only the one protocol - usually NetBIOS or SMB (which is a bit like blaming DHCP for the problem of Email "Spam" because when a DHCP server gives you an IP address you get lots of unsolicited email).

Samba sets up shares for chosen Unix directories (including all contained subdirectories). These appear to Microsoft Windows users as normal windows folders accessible via the network. Unix users can either mount the shares directly as part of their file structure or, alternatively, can use a utility, smbclient installed with samba to read the shares with a similar interface to a standard command line ftp program. Each directory can have different access privileges overlayed on top of the normal Unix file protections. For example: home directories would have read/write access for all known users, allowing each to access their own files. However they would still not have access to the files of others unless that permission would normally exist. Note that the netlogon share, typically distributed as a read only share from /etc/samba/netlogon, is the logon directory for user logon scripts.

Samba Configuration is achieved by editing a single file (typically installed as /etc/smb.conf or /etc/samba/smb.conf). Samba can also provide user logon scripts and group policy implementation through poledit.

Samba was originally developed for Unix by Andrew Tridgell at the Australian National University.

There is an alternate derivative version of Samba which has significant architectural and implementation differences in the key areas of the NT Domain Services, known as Samba TNG

a study from http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/2085218/samba-extends-lead-win-2003 showed that Samba was faster than the SMB implementation on Windows 2003