Customer Reviews

Using Samba: A File and Print Server for Linux, Unix & Mac OS X, 3rd Edition

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'd been wanting to set up Samba on my LAN for quite a while, but I just couldn't find decent documentation on it. I even e-mailed O'Reilly with the suggestion of making a Samba book and was very happy to be told that one was on its way. This book not only covers Samba and its configuration, but also explains it's protocol SMB/CIFS very well. I was able to breeze through the book in a short time and have Samba up and running perfectly within a week. O'Reilly lives up to it's reputation with this one.

This is by far the finest computer book I have ever read. I recommend this book to people wanting to install and use Samba because no other book, HOWTO, or online forum explains SAMBA so well. I also recommend this book to people just getting their feet wet with networking because it comprehensively examines both Linux and Windows networking issues in an extremely easy to read, step-by-step way.

This book has screen shots -- a lot of them. This book has examples -- a lot of them. This book has very easily followed writing that tells you how to set up your Linux and Windows machines and how to get Samba going. The book sits down with you, rolls up your sleeves, and shows you how to progress in a way that yeilds desired results -- Samba installs and works on your network! It blends instruction with just the right amount of background explanation without forcing you to read page after page of useless, smothering detail. A lot of authors would be well advised to achieve this kind of balance in computer books and darn few succeed. I had my Windows box talking to my Linux box via Samba in just a day. I spent about 2 weeks going over the book and studying my existing Windows network before making any software changes whatsoever.

This book offers a comprehensive networking fault tree people new to networking will find extremely useful. Follow this fault tree and you will be able to correct general networking problems as well as specific Samba problems. When I had networking problems back when I first got into Linux with Red Hat 6.0, I could have fixed them with this book's fault tree. It would have saved me hours of frustration to have worked through this book's fault tree.

I think everyone wanting to connect Linux boxes to Windows boxes should rush to order this book and then spend 2 weeks reading it cover to cover before messing with ANY network settings. You will be rewarded for your money and patience with results and a feeling of genuine accomplishment.

I've noticed a trend in Linux books where the authors like to waste space and reader's time with useless banner "warnings" and sometimes repetitive moralizing. Some writers print warnings every 2 pages and sound as bad as hoax emails. Well you won't find many warnings in Using Samba. They are worth reading when found.

As far as I can see, there are only 2 bad points about this book and you can't blame the authors for them: unless it is lovingly revised in a new edition, increasing rollouts of Windows 2000 will rapidly obsolete the excellent Samba advice you can get here. As of this writing (August 2000), Windows Millenium Edition will be available to consumers September 14, and depending on sales this may help obsolete the book also. The second bad point is that Samba has not gone into a new version which can deal with Windows 2000 and Millenium Edition yet. It is still stuck at 2.0.7. Hopefully the Samba team will release a new version in the near future covering Windows 2000. And I sure hope The Samba Book, as it is called, is revised to cover the new Windows products!

I've beed using Samba for the last 2 years and this book helped me finally understand how to properly configure it in 1 night. Very well written and easy to understand. Topics like oplocks and network printer configuration are explained in an easy to read manner. If your using or plan to use Samba, you need this book. Well worth the money.

This book covers the older SAMBA 2.0 which has a set of solutions for 10-year old Windows NT domain era of obsoleted technologies. There is some small mention of SAMBA 3.0 in the later edition, but it is still 98% SAMBA 2.0 based, which is far too overdocumented.

Even if this was SAMBA 3.0, it might not be enough because really the newer SAMBA 3.0.20 has made incredible breakthroughs in interoperability with Windows 2000/2003 ActiveDirectory single-sign-on solutions. Perhaps a newer release of this book or other material will cover the current solutions that are applicable in today's (or tomorrow's) marketplace.

So in a sense, this book doesn't really add any value, unless you are a System Administrator for Windows NT 4.0 computers that need interoperability with Linux (or the converse Linux that acquired out-of-market and deprecated Windows NT 4.0, maybe from a flea market, etc.).

Outstanding book, I knew very little about Samba configuration before I received this book. Had a file & print server up & running on an NT domain in 2 days. If you can only buy one Samba book, make it this one.

Samba is one of the wonders of the Open source movement. A small bunch of guys in out of the way Canberra, Australia develop a product that emulates a Windows Server Message Block (SMB) server. They do such a good job that within a couple of years they have sponsors assisting programmers around the world in bringing out a product that does a better job than anything Microsoft offers.

I've installed Samba in a number of different environments and used it both as a server and client. I wish I'd had this book. It does a good job of explaining how to set it all up, get it running and maintain it. Nothing else does as good a job. While you can (probably) install and run Samba using just the online manuals you will find it a lot easier if you buy this book. It certainly saves me a lot of time.

It is well written, easy to read, thorough and well paced. It contains a large number of examples and goes through the almost monolithic smb.conf file till it feels like an old friend.

While it does cover some of the underlying network protocols it does not unnecessarily dwell on them, it is a good mix of explanation and getting your hands dirty examples.

The book is well structured, starting with simple configurations and proceeding through to complex ones involving printers, domain controllers and the like. A marvelous way to learn, at the same time it is easy to find particular snippets of information when you require them. I find Appendices C (a configuration option quick reference) and D (a summary of the command line options for the daemons) and the fault tree in Chapter 9 particularly useful.

I would recommend this book to everyone who wishes to integrate Samba into a Windows environment, regardless if it is a small home network or an entire office building. And yes, you can download the entire text for free - the Samba team have now adopted it as part of the official documentation thanks to the authors and O'Reilly, but call me old fashioned, I like having the paper.

"Using Samba" was thorough and steadfast in its bid to completely demystify that popular freeware program called Samba. This book is a dedicated guide, which gave an invaluable insight into how Samba provides file and print services for its users. Apart from keeping pace with all the developments and metamorphoses which the freeware has undergone, the adherents of this program, especially those who run UNIX Samba Servers, will enjoy the extra details and revisions which service announcements (i.e. browsing) has received.
All the new developments and configurations (from version 2.0 to 2.2), including the latest in SWAT graphics, Network File System (or NFS), Server Message Block (or SMB), have been added.
This is a very sound book, whose intuition has consistently improved over the years.

Even by O'Reilly standards this book stands out as one of the easiest to read, most complete books of its kind. Everything else I read on this subject makes setting up Samba seem like a bit of a black art. This explains it well, especially on the issue of passwords. It offers a very comprehensive and helpful troubleshooting section.

I've a small network of Linux and Windows PC at home and I set up Samba in less than 2 hours using this book. This book contains detail instructions in setting up the Linux PCs as well as the Windows PCs. It explains everything from IP, TCP/IP at the start then goes on to explain how to set up the clients. One of my favorite things about this book is that it contains a small section on Performance Tuning as well as setting up SSL.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to set up Samba.

For a long time I knew what Samba was, but I never had the need to use or configure it. When a need to use Samba finally came up, I had a difficult time making it work the way I wanted. I waded through several man pages and on-line HOWTO's, but I just wasn't getting the big picture, so I purchased this book.

My only regret is that I waited so long to buy it. This book is very easy to read and understand. I was even putting off buying the book because of the impending release of Samba 3.0; I was afraid the book would be obsolete after I bought it. Much to my surprise, this book also covers Samba 3.

It has plenty of nice screenshots to help you through (client) configuration of various windows versions and even OS X.

Sample configuration files are provided, which can help you get up and running in a hurry, but it does a good job going into the detail of the configuration files to help you "tighten" things up later on. One of the appendices even features a two sentence description of each config file option - a welcome addition.

Unlike a lot of on-line documentation, this book is easy to read. Initially, I was just trying to get my smb server working, but I couldn't help but read well beyond the information I initially sought. I'm now prepared to configure samba as the Primary Domain Controller (PDC) for our network.

There's also a good portion of the book devoted to using smbclient to browse existing networks.