Samba-3 by Example: Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment

John Terpstra had done a great job showing how SAMBA can be used in real world scenarios. The scenarios are representative of both the environments and customer needs that I have had to address as a consultant. More importantly, it was great to read a book from the Open Source community that was not a diatribe against Microsoft, but rather focused on how one gets Windows and UNIX/Linux working seamlessly in a heterogeneous environment. The open and honest discussion around interoperability with Windows versus replacing Windows is quite informative. The book did not contain hyperbolic discussions around the technical or ethical benefits of Open Source. This is a book that I would recommend to friends from either the Windows world or FLOSS space (Free/Libre/Open Source Software).Chapter 10, "Active Directory, Kerberos, and Security," was especially helpful and informative. I particularly appreciated the examples showing both the UNIX and Windows approaches to various problems. The thorough drilldown on the technical underpinnings and explanation of the historical issues gives a good perspective. This chapter helped me understand SAMBA coexistence/interoperability in Active Directory based environments. Having details on security, performance, locking, and the real world conundrums that arise made it possible to translate the books scenarios to my specific needs.The book is easy to read and clearly details the steps required when setting up your SAMBA environment. The book includes some great references, and lots of accurate, step by step guidance. Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone trying to set up and use SAMBA.

When I finished this book I decided that I had to recommned it because it is extremely helpful. There aren't many good examples of using Samba to solve real world fileserver problems on the web and none on any system man page that I have found, so it's a wonderfull reference. The chapter on using Samba with Windows is also very helpful Altogether this stuff makes it a great reference and a must have for me.I would recommend this book to anybody who needs a fileserver and is considering using SAMBA...even before any of the "administering" type books.

First off, I was a contributing author on Samba Unleashed. Samba Unleashed is now over 4 years old, written for Samba 2.x.I have been loosely following Samba 3, largely implementing Samba 2.2 with NIS and pGINA. Although I am very familiar with Kerberos, I have not tackled Samba 3 with it yet, let alone LDAP. So I was looking for a good update on Samba 3.This book starts out slow, but it's "no fluff" -- rim with examples and specifics on what you want to use. Nothing to fancy in the beginning, but just enough for the newbie -- although they'll still need to be somewhat Linux experienced. Chapter 1 was a nice touch with sniffing and explanations for the seasoned network admin, although could be a bit of overkill for the newbie.The book quickly shifts into higher gears on Samba 3's capabilities in latter chapters, a testament to its focus on the latest'n greatest. The LDAP and Kerberos information is accurate and to-the-point. It "cuts through the bull" and gets to the specifics -- especially on some of the FUD out there surrounding Samba (when the reality is some so-called "weaknesses" are not Samba, but CIFS/SMB itself).Definitely a book for those that want to "just get running now," from Samba newbie to seasoned author. ;-ppp

After digesting The Official SAMBA-3 HOWTO and Resource Guide, I was aching for some actual examples (as TOSHARG is almost void of them). This book delivers!It's difficult to express how impressed I am by Terpstra's book. It addresses the complete spectrum of Samba deployments, from the 10-person office to the 2000-seat multi-site enterprise. You assume the role of the "IT guy" in several example situations that seem quite non-hypothetical (read "some poor sap was in these very shoes") while Terpstra explains not just what to do, but how to do it and - most importantly - WHY.One of the nicest things about this book is that each situation is followed by a "Q & A" section - almost like a textbook - that addresses both the important points of the exercise, as well as some of the trivial details that were left out for the sake of brevity. Don't be tempted to skip them thinking that it's just a review.Definetly a "must-have" if you're looking to use Samba for anything more than a simple file share. You'll find tips, tricks, ancient wisdom and honest admissions of bugs (and their workarounds) that will keep you from losing your sanity.

If someone is paying you to make their Windows and Linux machines play nice with each other, this book will make it easy enough that you may feel guilty for taking their money.This book has almost every keystroke you need to type to get a Samba system doing what you need it to do. As someone who frequently gets frustrated trying to make useful configuration files by reading the documentation I appreciate the fact that every scenario he describes in the book comes with a complete set of configuration files which implement the scenario. Even if your situation isn't covered exactly in the book you will find that the examples here a great starting point that you can modify to do what you want.For example, using this book (and the online references it mentions) in an afternoon I was able to go from a new RedHat 9 machine with no Samba or LDAP installed to a system which was a member of a Win2k3 Active Directory domain, allowed local login using Windows AD credentials and kerberos, used full Windows ACLs for the domain user files on the Linux machine, and unified the Windows SID->Linux UID/GID mapping by installing an LDAP backend to store the ID mapping for consistent numbering across multiple Linux machines. There were some quirks along the way, like setting up the LDAP schemas and initializing the database, and compiling ACL support into the kernel (RedHat 9 doesn't include it by default), but in each case the book pointed to an online resource where the tools could be downloaded.<p>Very cool to go from (from my point of view) nearly impossible to nearly easy in just one book.