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Signed-off-by: Björn Baumbach <bb@sernet.de> Reviewed-by: Volker Lendecke <vl@samba.org> Autobuild-User(master): Björn Baumbach <bb@sernet.de> Autobuild-Date(master): Thu Jun 1 12:46:04 UTC 2023 on atb-devel-224
219 lines
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219 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
Contributor: Andrew Tridgell and the Samba Team
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Date: June 27, 1997
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Status: Always out of date! (Would not be the same without it!)
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Subject: A bit of history and a bit of fun
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============================================================================
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This is a short history of this project. It's not supposed to be
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comprehensive, just enough so that new users can get a feel for where
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this project has come from and maybe where it's going to.
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The whole thing really started in December 1991. I was (and still am)
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a PhD student in the Computer Sciences Laboratory at the Australian
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National University, in Canberra, Australia. We had just got a
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beta copy of eXcursion from Digital, and I was testing it on my PC. At
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this stage I was a MS-DOS user, dabbling in windows.
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eXcursion ran (at the time) only with Dec's `Pathworks' network for
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DOS. I had up till then been using PC-NFS to connect to our local sun
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workstations, and was reasonably happy with it. In order to run
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pathworks I had to stop using PC-NFS and try using pathworks to mount
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disk space. Unfortunately pathworks was only available for digital
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workstations running VMS or Ultrix so I couldn't mount from the suns
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anymore.
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I had access to a a decstation 3100 running Ultrix that I used to
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administer, and I got the crazy notion that the protocol that
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pathworks used to talk to ultrix couldn't be that hard, and maybe I
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could work it out. I had never written a network program before, and
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certainly didn't know what a socket was.
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In a few days, after looking at some example code for sockets, I
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discovered it was pretty easy to write a program to "spy" on the file
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sharing protocol. I wrote and installed this program (the sockspy.c
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program supplied with this package) and captured everything that the
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pathworks client said to the pathworks server.
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I then tried writing short C programs (using Turbo C under DOS) to do
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simple file operations on the network drive (open, read, cd etc) and
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looked at the packets that the server and client exchanged. From this
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I worked out what some of the bytes in the packets meant, and started
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to write my own program to do the same thing on a sun.
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After a day or so more I had my first successes and actually managed
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to get a connection and to read a file. From there it was all
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downhill, and a week later I was happily (if a little unreliably)
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mounting disk space from a sun to my PC running pathworks. The server
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code had a lot of `magic' values in it, which seemed to be always
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present with the ultrix server. It was not till 2 years later that I
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found out what all these values meant.
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Anyway, I thought other people might be interested in what I had done,
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so I asked a few people at uni, and no one seemed much interested. I
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also spoke to a person at Digital in Canberra (the person who had
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organised a beta test of eXcursion) and asked if I could distribute
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what I'd done, or was it illegal. It was then that I first heard the
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word "netbios" when he told me that he thought it was all covered by a
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spec of some sort (the netbios spec) and thus what I'd done was not
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only legal, but silly.
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I found the netbios spec after asking around a bit (the RFC1001 and
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RFC1002 specs) and found they looked nothing like what I'd written, so
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I thought maybe the Digital person was mistaken. I didn't realise RFCs
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referred to the name negotiation and packet encapsulation over TCP/IP,
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and what I'd written was really a SMB implementation.
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Anyway, he encouraged me to release it so I put out "Server 0.1" in
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January 1992. I got quite a good response from people wanting to use
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pathworks with non-digital unix workstations, and I soon fixed a few
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bugs, and released "Server 0.5" closely followed by "Server 1.0". All
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three releases came out within about a month of each other.
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At this point I got an X Terminal on my desk, and I no longer needed eXcursion
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and I prompty forgot about the whole project, apart from a few people
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who e-mailed me occasionally about it.
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Nearly two years then passed with just occasional e-mails asking about
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new versions and bugs. I even added a note to the ftp site asking for
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a volunteer to take over the code as I no longer used it. No one
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volunteered.
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During this time I did hear from a couple of people who said it should
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be possible to use my code with Lanmanager, but I never got any
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definite confirmation.
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One e-mail I got about the code did, however, make an impression. It
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was from Dan Shearer at the university of South Australia, and he said
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this:
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I heard a hint about a free Pathworks server for Unix in the
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Net channel of the Linux list. After quite a bit of chasing
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(and lots of interested followups from other Linux people) I
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got hold of a release news article from you, posted in Jan 92,
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from someone in the UK.
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Can you tell me what the latest status is? I think you might
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suddenly find a whole lot of interested hackers in the Linux
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world at least, which is a place where things tend to happen
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fast (and even some reliable code gets written, BION!)
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I asked him what Linux was, and he told me it was a free Unix for PCs.
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This was in November 1992 and a few months later I was a Linux
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convert! I still didn't need a pathworks server though, so I didn't do
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the port, but I think Dan did.
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At about this time I got an e-mail from Digital, from a person working
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on the Alpha software distribution. He asked if I would mind if they
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included my server with the "contributed" cd-rom. This was a bit of a
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shock to me as I never expected Dec to ask me if they could use my
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code! I wrote back saying it was OK, but never heard from him again. I
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don't know if it went on the cd-rom.
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Anyway, the next big event was in December 1993, when Dan again sent
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me an e-mail saying my server had "raised its ugly head" on
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comp.protocols.tcpip.ibmpc. I had a quick look on the group, and was
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surprised to see that there were people interested in this thing.
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At this time a person from our computer center offered me a couple of
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cheap ethernet cards (3c505s for $15 each) and coincidentially someone
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announced on one of the Linux channels that he had written a 3c505
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driver for Linux. I bought the cards, hacked the driver a little and
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setup a home network between my wifes PC and my Linux box. I then
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needed some way to connect the two, and I didn't own PC-NFS at home,
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so I thought maybe my server could be useful. On the newsgroup among
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the discussions of my server someone had mentioned that there was a
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free client that might work with my server that Microsoft had put up
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for ftp. I downloaded it and found to my surprise that it worked first
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time with my `pathworks' server!
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Well, I then did a bit of hacking, asked around a bit and found (I
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think from Dan) that the spec I needed was for the "SMB" protocol, and
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that it was available via ftp. I grabbed it and started removing all
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those ugly constants from the code, now that all was explained.
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On December 1st 1993 I announced the start of the "Netbios for Unix"
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project, seeding the mailing list with all the people who had e-mailed
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me over the years asking about the server.
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About 35 versions (and two months) later I wrote a short history of
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the project, which you have just read. There are now over a hundred
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people on the mailing list, and lots of people report that they use
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the code and like it. In a few days I will be announcing the release
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of version 1.6 to some of the more popular (and relevant) newsgroups.
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Andrew Tridgell
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6th February 1994
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---------------------
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It is now May 1995 and there are about 1400 people on the mailing
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list. I got downloads from the main Samba ftp site from around 5000
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unique hosts in a two month period. There are several mirror
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sites as well. The current version number is 1.9.13.
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---------------------
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---------------------
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It's now March 1996 and version 1.9.16alpha1 has just been
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released. There have been lots of changes recently with master browser
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support and the ability to do domain logons etc. Samba has also been
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ported to OS/2, the amiga and NetWare. There are now 3000 people on
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the samba mailing list.
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---------------------
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---------------------
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It's now June 1997 and samba-1.9.17 is due out soon. My how time passes!
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Please refer to the WHATSNEW.txt for an update on new features. Just when
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you think you understand what is happening the ground rules change - this
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is a real world after all. Since the heady days of March 1996 there has
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been a concerted effort within the SMB protocol using community to document
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and standardize the protocols. The CIFS initiative has helped a long way
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towards creating a better understood and more interoperable environment.
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The Samba Team has grown in number and have been very active in the standards
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formation and documentation process.
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The net effect has been that we have had to do a lot of work to bring Samba
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into line with new features and capabilities in the SMB protocols.
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The past year has been a productive one with the following releases:
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1.9.16, 1.9.16p2, 1.9.16p6, 1.9.16p9, 1.9.16p10, 1.9.16p11
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There are some who believe that 1.9.15p8 was the best release and others
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who would not want to be without the latest. Whatever your perception we
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hope that 1.9.17 will close the gap and convince you all that the long
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wait and the rolling changes really were worth it. Here is functionality
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and a level of code maturity that ..., well - you can be the judge!
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Happy SMB networking!
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Samba Team
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ps: The bugs are ours, so please report any you find.
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---------------------
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---------------------
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It's now October 1998. We just got back from the 3rd CIFS conference
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in SanJose. The Samba Team was the biggest contingent there.
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Samba 2.0 should be shipping in the next few weeks with much better
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domain controller support, GUI configuration, a new user space SMB
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filesystem and lots of other neat stuff. I've also noticed that a
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search of job ads in DejaNews turned up 3900 that mention Samba. Looks
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like we've created a small industry.
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I've been asked again where the name Samba came from. I might as well
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put it down here for everyone to read. The code in Samba was first
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called just "server", it then got renamed "smbserver" when I
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discovered that the protocol is called SMB. Then in April 1994 I got
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an email from Syntax, the makers of "TotalNet advanced Server", a
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commercial SMB server. They told me that they had a trademark on the
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name SMBserver and I would have to change the name. I ran an egrep for
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words containing S, M, and B on /usr/dict/words and the name Samba
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looked like the best choice. Strangely enough when I repeat that now I
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notice that Samba isn't in /usr/dict/words on my system anymore!
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---------------------
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