Customer Reviews

Samba Administrator's Handbook (Administrator's Handbooks)

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

 

 

Concise AND complete. Has info for specific operating systems (solaris, linux, both BSDs, IRIX, mac) when there's differences. Samba performance enhancements and OS-specific things that'll help samba work better, too. Contrary to the marketing gobbledygook ("Nuts-and-bolts only -no theory") the book's specific examples of what you should do also have short descriptions of WHY you should do it, too, which is really nice when you're trying to figure out what the heck Windows thinks is going on.

-russ

This book was no help to me, even though I have a nice running Samba configuration already. It fails to develop any concepts or theory, and does not connect any problems or tasks with associated commands. The reader is left wondering if someone has really written a book on this topic that is worth reading, such as in the O'Reilly series. I see here over Amazon that there is, and plan to try that one next. This book is all over the place. At one point they are talking about the options to basic Unix commands, then giving lists of arguments for Samba commands, while never explaining how the two relate.

To give a specific example of how bad this book is, it shows on page 18 and 19 what happens when you use "smbclient," giving the command syntax and a sample output. At no point does it describe what any of the output fields mean in any particular context. It simply adds nothing to the basic command, and gives no clue as to why anyone would use this command.

Another reviewer suggested it would be good as a booster seat for a child. I think it's a little small for this purpose, but might be good for elevating something like elevating a desktop pencil sharpener.

Most of the stuff in this book I could have figured out by using the SWAT interface and reading its help file.

There needs to be more description of the commands/settings and not just a list of all the conf lines.

The index in the back has erroneous listings (see cache) as well.

Looks like it would be better if I used it for a hi chair for my kids.

Concise AND complete. Has info for specific operating systems (solaris, linux, both BSDs, IRIX, mac) when there's differences. Samba performance enhancements and OS-specific things that'll help samba work better, too. Contrary to the marketing gobbledygook ("Nuts-and-bolts only -no theory") the book's specific examples of what you should do also have short descriptions of WHY you should do it, too, which is really nice when you're trying to figure out what the heck Windows thinks is going on.

-russ

This book was almost a total waste of time and money. First, it only covers configuring Samba using SWAT which makes it worthless if you are running a secure server. In addition to this, the index does not include any of the configuration directives so if you do have some idea what you are looking for you can't find it without thumbing through the entire book.