samba-mirror/sambafaq-1.html at 3e0b52e5a9b8174c6a42edecf59fb4672993a22f

mirror of https://github.com/samba-team/samba.git synced 2024-12-27 03:21:53 +03:00

Samba Release Account 9b5af2ad79 FAQ Update

Tidied up some entries with incorrect casing
Added NT SP3 entry
Updated list of ported systems
Updated More Info entry with more web site details and list of all doco files
Moved mailing list subscriptions to separate entry
Removed reference to 'samba team mailing list' just in case people guessed
Updated nmbd -C entry, indicating obsolete.
General cleanup of document with indented lists.
Added url links where needed. Web docs will not show urls but will link,
text files will show file names AND urls
Fixed missing info where '\\' was being interpreted as '\' (used [\\])

If I get a warning before 1.9.17 is released, I'll clean up blank lines
from the text faq.  Don't want to do them now as I may modify the sgml again.

For those who don't know, we now maintain the FAQ as an sgml document,
and convert/create html and txt FAQs from that. We use LinuxDoc which is
now called SGMLtools.

Paul.
(This used to be commit 37214555db)

1997-06-08 14:44:43 +00:00

393 lines

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 <TITLE> Samba FAQ: General Information</TITLE>
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 <HR>
 <H2><A NAME="s1">1. General Information</A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="general_info"></A>
 </P>
 <P>All about Samba - what it is, how to get it, related sources of
 information, how to understand the version numbering scheme, pizza
 details</P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1 What is Samba? </A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="introduction"></A>
 Samba is a suite of programs which work together to allow clients to
 access to a server's filespace and printers via the SMB (Server
 Message Block) protocol. Initially written for Unix, Samba now also
 runs on Netware, OS/2 and VMS.</P>
 <P>In practice, this means that you can redirect disks and printers to
 Unix disks and printers from Lan Manager clients, Windows for
 Workgroups 3.11 clients, Windows NT clients, Linux clients and OS/2
 clients. There is also a generic Unix client program supplied as part
 of the suite which allows Unix users to use an ftp-like interface to
 access filespace and printers on any other SMB servers. This gives the
 capability for these operating systems to behave much like a LAN
 Server or Windows NT Server machine, only with added functionality and
 flexibility designed to make life easier for administrators.</P>
 <P>The components of the suite are (in summary):</P>
 <P>
 <UL>
 <LI><B>smbd</B>, the SMB server. This handles actual connections from clients, doing all the file, permission and username work</LI>
 <LI><B>nmbd</B>, the Netbios name server, which helps clients locate servers, doing the browsing work and managing domains as this capability is being built into Samba</LI>
 <LI><B>smbclient</B>, the Unix-hosted client program</LI>
 <LI><B>smbrun</B>, a little 'glue' program to help the server run external programs</LI>
 <LI><B>testprns</B>, a program to test server access to printers</LI>
 <LI><B>testparms</B>, a program to test the Samba configuration file for correctness</LI>
 <LI><B>smb.conf</B>, the Samba configuration file</LI>
 <LI><B>smbprint</B>, a sample script to allow a Unix host to use smbclient to print to an SMB server</LI>
 <LI><B>Documentation!</B> DON'T neglect to read it - you will save a great deal of time!</LI>
 </UL>
 </P>
 <P>The suite is supplied with full source (of course!) and is GPLed.</P>
 <P>The primary creator of the Samba suite is Andrew Tridgell. Later
 versions incorporate much effort by many net.helpers. The man pages
 and this FAQ were originally written by Karl Auer.</P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2 What is the current version of Samba? </A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="current_version"></A>
 At time of writing, the current version was 1.9.17. If you want to be
 sure check the bottom of the change-log file.
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/alpha/change-log">ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/alpha/change-log</A></P>
 <P>For more information see
 <A HREF="#version_nums">What do the version numbers mean?</A></P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.3">1.3 Where can I get it? </A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="where"></A>
 The Samba suite is available via anonymous ftp from
 samba.anu.edu.au. The latest and greatest versions of the suite are in
 the directory:</P>
 <P>/pub/samba/</P>
 <P>Development (read "alpha") versions, which are NOT necessarily stable
 and which do NOT necessarily have accurate documentation, are
 available in the directory:</P>
 <P>/pub/samba/alpha</P>
 <P>Note that binaries are NOT included in any of the above. Samba is
 distributed ONLY in source form, though binaries may be available from
 other sites. Recent versions of some Linux distributions, for example,
 do contain Samba binaries for that platform.</P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.4">1.4 What do the version numbers mean? </A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="version_nums"></A>
 It is not recommended that you run a version of Samba with the word
 "alpha" in its name unless you know what you are doing and are willing
 to do some debugging. Many, many people just get the latest
 recommended stable release version and are happy. If you are brave, by
 all means take the plunge and help with the testing and development -
 but don't install it on your departmental server. Samba is typically
 very stable and safe, and this is mostly due to the policy of many
 public releases.</P>
 <P>How the scheme works:
 <OL>
 <LI>When major changes are made the version number is increased. For
 example, the transition from 1.9.15 to 1.9.16. However, this version
 number will not appear immediately and people should continue to use
 .9.15 for production systems (see next point.)
 </LI>
 <LI>Just after major changes are made the software is considered
 unstable, and a series of alpha releases are distributed, for example
 .9.16alpha1. These are for testing by those who know what they are
 doing.  The "alpha" in the filename will hopefully scare off those who
 are just looking for the latest version to install.
 </LI>
 <LI>When Andrew thinks that the alphas have stabilised to the point
 where he would recommend new users install it, he renames it to the
 same version number without the alpha, for example 1.9.16.
 </LI>
 <LI>Inevitably bugs are found in the "stable" releases and minor patch
 levels are released which give us the pXX series, for example 1.9.16p2.</LI>
 </OL>
 So the progression goes:
 <PRE>
 .9.15p7        (production)
 .9.15p8        (production)
 .9.16alpha1    (test sites only)
                   :
 .9.16alpha20   (test sites only)
 .9.16          (production)
 .9.16p1        (production)
 </PRE>
 The above system means that whenever someone looks at the samba ftp
 site they will be able to grab the highest numbered release without an
 alpha in the name and be sure of getting the current recommended
 version.</P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.5">1.5 What platforms are supported? </A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="platforms"></A>
 Many different platforms have run Samba successfully. The platforms
 most widely used and thus best tested are Linux and SunOS.</P>
 <P>At time of writing, the Makefile claimed support for:
 <UL>
 <LI> A/UX 3.0</LI>
 <LI> AIX</LI>
 <LI> Altos Series 386/1000</LI>
 <LI> Amiga</LI>
 <LI> Apollo Domain/OS sr10.3</LI>
 <LI> BSDI </LI>
 <LI> B.O.S. (Bull Operating System)</LI>
 <LI> Cray, Unicos 8.0</LI>
 <LI> Convex</LI>
 <LI> DGUX. </LI>
 <LI> DNIX.</LI>
 <LI> FreeBSD</LI>
 <LI> HP-UX</LI>
 <LI> Intergraph. </LI>
 <LI> Linux with/without shadow passwords and quota</LI>
 <LI> LYNX 2.3.0</LI>
 <LI> MachTen (a unix like system for Macintoshes)</LI>
 <LI> Motorola 88xxx/9xx range of machines</LI>
 <LI> NetBSD</LI>
 <LI> NEXTSTEP Release 2.X, 3.0 and greater (including OPENSTEP for Mach).</LI>
 <LI> OS/2 using EMX 0.9b</LI>
 <LI> OSF1</LI>
 <LI> QNX 4.22</LI>
 <LI> RiscIX. </LI>
 <LI> RISCOs 5.0B</LI>
 <LI> SEQUENT. </LI>
 <LI> SCO (including: 3.2v2, European dist., OpenServer 5)</LI>
 <LI> SGI.</LI>
 <LI> SMP_DC.OSx v1.1-94c079 on Pyramid S series</LI>
 <LI> SONY NEWS, NEWS-OS (4.2.x and 6.1.x)</LI>
 <LI> SUNOS 4</LI>
 <LI> SUNOS 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 (Solaris 2.2, 2.3, and '2.4 and later')</LI>
 <LI> Sunsoft ISC SVR3V4</LI>
 <LI> SVR4</LI>
 <LI> System V with some berkely extensions (Motorola 88k R32V3.2).</LI>
 <LI> ULTRIX.</LI>
 <LI> UNIXWARE</LI>
 <LI> UXP/DS</LI>
 </UL>
 </P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.6">1.6 How can I find out more about Samba? </A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="more"></A>
 There are a number of places to look for more information on Samba, including:
 <UL>
 <LI>Two mailing lists devoted to discussion of Samba-related matters.  </LI>
 <LI>The newsgroup, comp.protocols.smb, which has a great deal of discussion on Samba. </LI>
 <LI>The WWW site 'SAMBA Web Pages' at
 <A HREF="http://samba.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba/samba.html">http://samba.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba/samba.html</A> includes:
 <UL>
 <LI>Links to man pages and documentation, including this FAQ</LI>
 <LI>A comprehensive survey of Samba users.</LI>
 <LI>A searchable hypertext archive of the Samba mailing list.</LI>
 <LI>Links to Samba source code, binaries, and mirrors of both.</LI>
 </UL>
 </LI>
 <LI>The long list of topic documentation.  These files can be found in the 'docs' directory of the Samba source, or at
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/">ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/</A>
 <UL>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/Application_Serving.txt">Application_Serving.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/BROWSING.txt">BROWSING.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/BUGS.txt">BUGS.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/DIAGNOSIS.txt">DIAGNOSIS.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/DNIX.txt">DNIX.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/DOMAIN.txt">DOMAIN.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/DOMAIN_CONTROL.txt">CONTROL.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/ENCRYPTION.txt">ENCRYPTION.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/Faxing.txt">Faxing.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/GOTCHAS.txt">GOTCHAS.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/HINTS.txt">HINTS.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/INSTALL.sambatar">INSTALL.sambatar</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/INSTALL.txt">INSTALL.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/MIRRORS">MIRRORS</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/NetBIOS.txt">NetBIOS.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/OS2.txt">OS2.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/PROJECTS">PROJECTS</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/Passwords.txt">Passwords.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/Printing.txt">Printing.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/README.DCEDFS">README.DCEDFS</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/README.OS2">README.OS2</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/README.jis">README.jis</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/README.sambatar">README.sambatar</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/SCO.txt">SCO.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/SMBTAR.notes">SMBTAR.notes</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/Speed.txt">Speed.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/Support.txt">Support.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/THANKS">THANKS</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/Tracing.txt">Tracing.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/UNIX-SMB.txt">SMB.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/Warp.txt">Warp.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/WinNT.txt">WinNT.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/history">history</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/security_level.txt">level.txt</A></LI>
 <LI>
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/docs/wfw_slip.htm">slip.htm</A></LI>
 </UL>
 </LI>
 </UL>
 </P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.7">1.7 How do I subscribe to the Samba Mailing Lists?</A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="mailinglist"></A>
 Send email to
 <A HREF="mailto:listproc@samba.anu.edu.au">listproc@samba.anu.edu.au</A>. Make sure the subject line is
 blank, and include the following two lines in the body of the message:
 <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE>
 <PRE>
 subscribe samba Firstname Lastname
 subscribe samba-announce Firstname Lastname
 </PRE>
 </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE>
 Obviously you should substitute YOUR first name for "Firstname" and
 YOUR last name for "Lastname"! Try not to send any signature stuff, it
 sometimes confuses the list processor.</P>
 <P>The samba list is a digest list - every eight hours or so it
 regurgitates a single message containing all the messages that have
 been received by the list since the last time and sends a copy of this
 message to all subscribers.</P>
 <P>If you stop being interested in Samba, please send another email to
 <A HREF="mailto:listproc@samba.anu.edu.au">listproc@samba.anu.edu.au</A>. Make sure the subject line is blank, and
 include the following two lines in the body of the message:
 <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE>
 <PRE>
 unsubscribe samba
 unsubscribe samba-announce
 </PRE>
 </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE>
 The <B>From:</B> line in your message <EM>MUST</EM> be the same address you used when
 you subscribed.</P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.8">1.8 Something's gone wrong - what should I do? </A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="wrong"></A>
 <B><F>#</F> *** IMPORTANT! *** <F>#</F></B></P>
 <P>DO NOT post messages on mailing lists or in newsgroups until you have
 carried out the first three steps given here!</P>
 <P>Firstly, see if there are any likely looking entries in this FAQ! If
 you have just installed Samba, have you run through the checklist in
 <A HREF="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/DIAGNOSIS.txt">DIAGNOSIS.txt</A>? It can save you a lot of time and effort.
 DIAGNOSIS.txt can also be found in the docs directory of the Samba distribution.</P>
 <P>Secondly, read the man pages for smbd, nmbd and smb.conf, looking for
 topics that relate to what you are trying to do.</P>
 <P>Thirdly, if there is no obvious solution to hand, try to get a look at
 the log files for smbd and/or nmbd for the period during which you
 were having problems. You may need to reconfigure the servers to
 provide more extensive debugging information - usually level 2 or
 level 3 provide ample debugging info. Inspect these logs closely,
 looking particularly for the string "Error:".</P>
 <P>Fourthly, if you still haven't got anywhere, ask the mailing list or
 newsgroup.  In general nobody minds answering questions provided you
 have followed the preceding steps. It might be a good idea to scan the
 archives of the mailing list, which are available through the Samba
 web site described in the previous
 section.</P>
 <P>If you successfully solve a problem, please mail the FAQ maintainer a
 succinct description of the symptom, the problem and the solution, so
 I can incorporate it in the next version.</P>
 <P>If you make changes to the source code, _please_ submit these patches
 so that everyone else gets the benefit of your work. This is one of
 the most important aspects to the maintainence of Samba. Send all
 patches to
 <A HREF="mailto:samba-bugs@samba.anu.edu.au">samba-bugs@samba.anu.edu.au</A>. Do not send patches to Andrew Tridgell or any
 other individual, they may be lost if you do.</P>
 <H2><A NAME="ss1.9">1.9 Pizza supply details </A></H2>
 <P>
 <A NAME="pizza"></A>
 Those who have registered in the Samba survey as "Pizza Factory" will
 already know this, but the rest may need some help. Andrew doesn't ask
 for payment, but he does appreciate it when people give him
 pizza. This calls for a little organisation when the pizza donor is
 twenty thousand kilometres away, but it has been done.</P>
 <P>Method 1: Ring up your local branch of an international pizza chain
 and see if they honour their vouchers internationally. Pizza Hut do,
 which is how the entire Canberra Linux Users Group got to eat pizza
 one night, courtesy of someone in the US</P>
 <P>Method 2: Ring up a local pizza shop in Canberra and quote a credit
 card number for a certain amount, and tell them that Andrew will be
 collecting it (don't forget to tell him.) One kind soul from Germany
 did this.</P>
 <P>Method 3: Purchase a pizza voucher from your local pizza shop that has
 no international affiliations and send it to Andrew. It is completely
 useless but he can hang it on the wall next to the one he already has
 from Germany :-)</P>
 <P>Method 4: Air freight him a pizza with your favourite regional
 flavours. It will probably get stuck in customs or torn apart by
 hungry sniffer dogs but it will have been a noble gesture.</P>
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