Customer Reviews

Samba-3 by Example: Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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.

This book fills in where the author's "The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide" left off. It gives "real world" examples that make sense. The author assumes some admin experience on the readers part, however the examples build from small implementations through large-scale enterprise file & print sharing, so even those new to administration of Samba should find great value in both the books. I even found the discriptions of the smb protocol and how clients "talk" to servers and each other very easy to understand. If you liked the Official Samba-3 HOWTO... buy this to completely make use of the concepts by working the examples and learning solutions to some of the most common problems facing Samba admins. This book is like attending a training class, not just a "lecture" but actual hands-on tasks to enforce the concepts.

Using Linux in a Windows desktop environment requires the use of Samba for file and print sharing via the Windows explorer. But Samba has grown up as a full-fledged package for communicating between Linux and Windows over the last few years. Installing Samba as a Primary Domain Controller, implementing ldap for easy directory integration, or just installing it as a file and print server are all easy to do with the help of this book. The author takes a much easier to follow approach than most other writers on this subject. Instead of trying to go through each of the features and discuss them in detail he organizes the book by the type of installation and then walks you through a correct setup for that situation. For example some of the sections are: No-frills Samba Servers, Small Office Networking, Secure Office Networking, The 500-User Office, A Distributed 2000-User Network, Migrating NT4 Domain to Samba-3, and Migrating Netware Server to Samba-3. For each one of these situations the author dissects the technical issues, discusses each one, and then walks the reader through the implementing. The author also includes sections on things like performance, reliability, LDAP, and updating Samba. Nothing is left unexplained but each time you are told to check something or do something the exact syntax for doing it is given. Even with only very little or no Linux experience you can walk through this book and install a correctly functioning Samba server. Samba-3 by Example is highly recommended.

The author provides a good step-by-step procedure for integrating Windows XP/ME based hosts to SAMBA-3. The sections on LDAP are thorough and so is the useful information on integrating windows NT domains to SAMBA-3. I'd definitely recommend this book to NT sys admins and those with an interest in implementing SAMBA-3.

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.

Very cool to go from (from my point of view) nearly impossible to nearly easy in just one book.

I find this book a good mate for everyone who likes more reading on printed paper rather than a pc screen.
Through the pages you'll find plenty of examples and advices, expecially in the FAQ sections, but on the other side every single word is already available on the samba's official site.
Maybe, if this book was cheaper, people could buy it and place it on their desktop as a trusted fella.

The name says it all. This book is an excellent guide for the latest version of Samba. From small networks to enterprise level integration, Terpstra walks the user through examples.

I recommend this book not only for the great examples, but because it is great at instruction. In the first chapter it reviews network scanning and nessus as a way of troubleshooting and understanding the protocols. This kind of instruction is hard to find in most books.

Another great feature of this book is the breadth of the subjects covered. From active directory to ldap to kerberos and security - I was impressed with just the table of contents.

Overall, you can find more in-depth coverage of any of the individual topics in the book, but no one source quite like this one. It is a great book both for novices and for experienced administrators newly faced with unix/windows integration with samba.

Most books either provide untested examples for how to do this sort of thing, and so can only be taken as illustrative, and/or they cover a very narrow range of tasks. Terpstra has done neither: he's provided examples that actually work, that have been tested in operational environments, and he has provided a broad range of examples, examples that are useable regardless of the network type in place.

Further, he has written this book in a very accessible way. While Samble-3 is targeted at Readers with experience in networking, this book is useable by newbies, as well. Although Terpstra provides some rationale for his setups, his step-by-step directions simply can be followed in cookbook fashion until experience teaches more broadly.