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185 lines
6.4 KiB
Plaintext
This is version 2.0.X of Samba, the free SMB and CIFS client and
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server for unix and other operating systems. Samba is maintained by
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the Samba Team, who support the original author, Andrew Tridgell.
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>>>> Please read THE WHOLE of this file as it gives important information
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>>>> about the configuration and use of Samba.
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NOTE: Installation instructions may be found in
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docs/textdocs/UNIX_INSTALL.txt
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This software is freely distributable under the GNU public license, a
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copy of which you should have received with this software (in a file
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called COPYING).
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WHAT IS SMB?
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============
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This is a big question.
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The very short answer is that it is the protocol by which a lot of
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PC-related machines share files and printers and other informatiuon
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such as lists of available files and printers. Operating systems that
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support this natively include Windows NT, OS/2, and Linux and add on
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packages that achieve the same thing are available for DOS, Windows,
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VMS, Unix of all kinds, MVS, and more. Apple Macs and some Web Browsers
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can speak this protocol as well. Alternatives to SMB include
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Netware, NFS, Appletalk, Banyan Vines, Decnet etc; many of these have
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advantages but none are both public specifications and widely
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implemented in desktop machines by default.
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The Common Internet Filesystem (CIFS) is what the new SMB initiative
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is called. For details watch http://samba.org/cifs.
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WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO USE SMB?
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==============================
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1. Many people want to integrate their Microsoft or IBM style desktop
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machines with their Unix or VMS (etc) servers.
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2. Others want to integrate their Microsoft (etc) servers with Unix
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or VMS (etc) servers. This is a different problem to integrating
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desktop clients.
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3. Others want to replace protocols like NFS, DecNet and Novell NCP,
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especially when used with PCs.
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WHAT CAN SAMBA DO?
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==================
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Here is a very short list of what samba includes, and what it does. For
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many networks this can be simply summarised by "Samba provides a complete
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replacement for Windows NT, Warp, NFS or Netware servers."
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- a SMB server, to provide Windows NT and LAN Manager-style file and print
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services to SMB clients such as Windows 95, Warp Server, smbfs and others.
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- a NetBIOS (rfc1001/1002) nameserver, which amongst other things gives
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browsing support. Samba can be the master browser on your LAN if you wish.
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- a ftp-like SMB client so you can access PC resources (disks and
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printers) from unix, Netware and other operating systems
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- a tar extension to the client for backing up PCs
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- limited command-line tool that supports some of the NT administrative
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functionality, which can be used on Samba, NT workstation and NT server.
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For a much better overview have a look at the web site at
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http://samba.org/samba, and browse the user survey.
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Related packages include:
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- smbfs, a linux-only filesystem allowing you to mount remote SMB
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filesystems from PCs on your linux box. This is included as standard with
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Linux 2.0 and later.
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- tcpdump-smb, a extension to tcpdump to allow you to investigate SMB
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networking problems over netbeui and tcp/ip.
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- smblib, a library of smb functions which are designed to make it
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easy to smb-ise any particular application. See
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ftp://samba.org/pub/samba/smblib.
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CONTRIBUTIONS
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=============
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If you want to contribute to the development of the software then
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please join the mailing list. The Samba team accepts patches
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(preferably in "diff -u" format, see docs/BUGS.txt for more details)
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and are always glad to receive feedback or suggestions to the address
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samba-bugs@samba.org. We have recently put a new bug tracking
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system into place which should help the throughput quite a lot. You
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can also get the Samba sourcecode straight from the CVS tree - see
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http://samba.org/cvs.html.
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You could also send hardware/software/money/jewelry or pizza
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vouchers directly to Andrew. The pizza vouchers would be especially
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welcome, in fact there is a special field in the survey for people who
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have paid up their pizza :-)
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If you like a particular feature then look through the CVS change-log
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(on the web at http://samba.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/samba) and see
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who added it, then send them an email.
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Remember that free software of this kind lives or dies by the response
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we get. If noone tells us they like it then we'll probably move onto
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something else. However, as you can see from the user survey quite a lot of
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people do seem to like it at the moment :-)
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Andrew Tridgell
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Email: samba-bugs@samba.org
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3 Ballow Crescent
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Macgregor, A.C.T.
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2615 Australia
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Samba Team
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Email: samba-bugs@samba.org
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MORE INFO
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=========
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DOCUMENTATION
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-------------
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There is quite a bit of documentation included with the package,
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including man pages, and lots of .txt files with hints and useful
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info. This is also available from the web page. There is a growing
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collection of information under docs/faq; by the next release expect
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this to be the default starting point.
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A list of Samba documentation in languages other than English is
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available on the web page.
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If you would like to help with the documentation (and we _need_ help!)
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then have a look at the mailing list samba-docs, archived at
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http://lists.samba.org/
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MAILING LIST
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------------
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There is a mailing list for discussion of Samba. To subscribe send
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mail to listproc@samba.org with a body of "subscribe samba Your Name"
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Please do NOT send this request to the list alias instead.
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To send mail to everyone on the list mail to samba@listproc.anu.edu.au
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There is also an announcement mailing list where new versions are
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announced. To subscribe send mail to listproc@samba.org with a
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body of "subscribe samba-announce Your Name". All announcements also
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go to the samba list.
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For details of other Samba mailing lists and for access to archives, see
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http://lists.samba.org/
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NEWS GROUP
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----------
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You might also like to look at the usenet news group
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comp.protocols.smb as it often contains lots of useful info and is
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frequented by lots of Samba users. The newsgroup was initially setup
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by people on the Samba mailing list. It is not, however, exclusive to
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Samba, it is a forum for discussing the SMB protocol (which Samba
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implements). The samba list is gatewayed to this newsgroup.
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WEB SITE
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--------
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A Samba WWW site has been setup with lots of useful info. Connect to:
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http://samba.org/samba/
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As well as general information and documentation, this also has searchable
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archives of the mailing list and a user survey that shows who else is using
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this package. Have you registered with the survey yet? :-)
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