The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide, 2nd Edition [Paperback]

John H. Terpstra Editor (Author), Jelmer R. Vernooij Editor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 18, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0131882228 | ISBN-13: 978-0131882225 | Edition: 2

Fully Updated to Reflect Major Improvements and Configuration Changes in Samba-3.0.11 through 3.0.20+!

You’ve deployed Samba: Now get the most out of it with today’s definitive guide to maximizing Samba performance, stability, reliability, and power in your production environment. Direct from members of the Samba Team, The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide, Second Edition, offers the most systematic and authoritative coverage of Samba’s advanced features and capabilities. It has been extensively updated to reflect major improvements in the Samba-3.0 series of releases and additional performance enhancements in Samba-3.0.20 and later.

Use this book to go far beyond basic deployment, leveraging all of Samba’s components, from directory services to remote administration. Use it to find practical optimization techniques for any environment, from the workgroup to the enterprise. Use it to find detailed guidance and best practices for troubleshooting and problem solving. And, if your background is in Windows networking, use this book to get up to speed rapidly with Samba network administration in Linux/UNIX environments.

Coverage includes

• NEW! User Rights and Privileges features and their impact on default system behavior
• NEW! Expanded LDAP capabilities, the new Winbind subsystem, and Samba’s improved ACL handling
• NEW! Detailed coverage of the powerful Samba-3.x net local/remote administration utility
• NEW! Comprehensive documentation of IDMAP functionality
• NEW! Proven techniques for improving performance with large directories
• NEW! Samba integration with Windows Server 2003 and the latest versions of Active Directory
• Advanced techniques: interdomain trusts, loadable VFS file system drivers, distributed authentication, desktop profile management, CUPS printing, high availability, and more
• Contains a dramatically improved, more-detailed index

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Fully Updated to Reflect Major Improvements and Configuration Changes in Samba-3.0.11 through 3.0.20+!

You’ve deployed Samba: Now get the most out of it with today’s definitive guide to maximizing Samba performance, stability, reliability, and power in your production environment. Direct from members of the Samba Team, The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide, Second Edition, offers the most systematic and authoritative coverage of Samba’s advanced features and capabilities. It has been extensively updated to reflect major improvements in the Samba-3.0 series of releases and additional performance enhancements in Samba-3.0.20 and later.

Use this book to go far beyond basic deployment, leveraging all of Samba’s components, from directory services to remote administration. Use it to find practical optimization techniques for any environment, from the workgroup to the enterprise. Use it to find detailed guidance and best practices for troubleshooting and problem solving. And, if your background is in Windows networking, use this book to get up to speed rapidly with Samba network administration in Linux/UNIX environments.

Coverage includes

• NEW! User Rights and Privileges features and their impact on default system behavior
• NEW! Expanded LDAP capabilities, the new Winbind subsystem, and Samba’s improved ACL handling
• NEW! Detailed coverage of the powerful Samba-3.x net local/remote administration utility
• NEW! Comprehensive documentation of IDMAP functionality
• NEW! Proven techniques for improving performance with large directories
• NEW! Samba integration with Windows Server 2003 and the latest versions of Active Directory
• Advanced techniques: interdomain trusts, loadable VFS file system drivers, distributed authentication, desktop profile management, CUPS printing, high availability, and more
• Contains a dramatically improved, more-detailed index

About the Author

John H. Terpstra is a long-time member of the global Samba Team, a loose-knit group of about thirty people who contribute regularly to Samba.

Jelmer R. Vernooij is a long-time member of the global Samba Team, a loose-knit group of about thirty people who contribute regularly to Samba.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 944 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2 edition (August 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131882228
• ISBN-13: 978-0131882225
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 2.2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,193,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great technical reference for advanced use of Samba September 17, 2005

By Harold McFarland HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

This is not an introduction to Samba but a technical reference written by those who know it best - the Samba Team. If you already know something about Samba then this is the place you will find very detailed explanations of all the internal and external capabilities of Samba-3.0.11 and higher. While it is easy enough to find information on how to set Samba up as a file and print server, how to use its other features is harder information to come by. This book details setting up Samba as a domain controller, backup domain controller, or domain member, network browsing, access controls, record locking, securing Samba, interdomain trusts, printing support, user profiles, administration, monitoring, and tuning. A voluminous tome, most people will not be inclined to read through it but would more likely read the sections relevant to their current needs and the book is organized so that it is easy to use that way. A true technical reference it has everything you are likely to ever want to know about Samba-3 and how to set it up correctly as well as how to resolve common problems. This is a reference that I will be keeping close at hand and you will want to too if you use Samba-3. The Official Samba-3 Howto and Reference Guide, Second Edition is highly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book on technical details of SAMBA February 24, 2012

By rpv TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Samba is a mechanism that provides file and print server capabilities for Microsoft Windows clients from a wide variety of transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP)-based platforms. This book is written by members of the Samba team, and serves as a comprehensive state-of-the-art reference for Samba deployments. Be warned, however, that this is a big book, and, as the title aptly notes, it is a 'how-to' and a reference guide. It is not a book that can be read overnight to prepare for a Samba deployment. For that purpose, one of the authors has written another book [1] that has many sample real-life configurations, and is like the quick start guides that accompany consumer products. This book is similar to a detailed user's guide, for administrators who use Samba every day.

The book has six parts, with Part 1 discussing general installation. Part 2 discusses server configuration issues, such as various server types, domain control, and domain membership. This part also presents a Microsoft network configuration guide. This is useful for people with a Unix background who need to familiarize themselves with Windows. Part 3 presents advanced configuration challenges, and is the largest part of the book. It elucidates topics such as network browsing, account information databases (like lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP)), identity mapping, locking issues, access control methods, security, Microsoft distributed file systems, print support, use of domain accounts, and high availability.

Part 4 discusses migration and updating from earlier versions of Samba to the one current at the time of the book's printing (3.0.20), and from the Windows domain controller to the Samba domain controller. It also discusses the Samba Web administration tool. Part 5 is an overview of troubleshooting Samba issues. As with any network-based application, the sniffing tools tcpdump and ethereal are recommended. These are the right tools, and administrators should definitely use them for troubleshooting to get clues as to what is wrong before posting to user groups and posting bugs. Part 6 is a reference section addressing compiling, Samba manual pages, performance tuning, and portability.

There are many nice things about the book. One is that it includes a list of common errors at the end of each chapter. This is very useful, as it helps in preparing for troubleshooting the deployment errors. The book also contains references to Microsoft nomenclature and Web sites throughout, so that an administrator can connect the dots between a Samba implementation and the compatible Microsoft setup. The book offers a clear path to understanding Samba, with the use of boxed highlights, example configurations, tables, and diagrams. It would have been nice to see a reference to the Samba source files. Although a large percentage of users may not care for them, it would have been helpful, in the open source spirit, to include the source code references at all appropriate places in the book so that aspiring Samba developers could refer to them.

This book should be a welcome addition to the libraries of system administrators who use Samba to provide file server capabilities in their networks and who want to use Samba's powerful features.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excelent October 1, 2008

By Carlos M. Gonzalez

Amazon Verified Purchase

Everything you need to build a capable server running on linux using Samba. The definitive CURE & alternative to the MS product windows 2003 or NT , even 2005