A Samba is a suite of UNIX applications that speak the SMB (Server Message Block) Protocol . Many operating systems, including Windows and OS/2, use SMB to perform Client- server networking. By supporting this protocol, Samba allows UNIX Servers to get in on the action, communicating with the same networking protocol As Microsoft Windows products. Thus, a Samba-enabled UNIX machine can masqueradeas a server on your Microsoft network and offer the following services:
? Share one or more file systems
? Share printers installed on both the server and its clients
? Assist clients with Network Neighborhood browsing
? Authenticate clients logging onto a Windows domain
? Provide or assist with WINS name server resolution
Samba is the brainchild of Andrew Tridgell, who currently heads the Samba development team from his home of Canberra, Australia. The project was born in 1991 when Andrew created a fileserver program for his local network that supported an odd DEC protocol from Digital Path works. Although he didn?t know it at the time, that protocol later turned out to be SMB. A few years later, he expanded upon his Custom-made SMB server and began distributing it as a product on the Internet Under the name SMB Server. However, Andrew couldn?t keep that name?I t already belonged to another company?s product?so he tried the following UNIX renaming approach:
grep -i 's.*m.*b' /usr/dict/words
And the response was:
salmonberry samba sawtimber scramble
Thus, the name ?Samba? was born.*
Today, the Samba suite revolves around a pair of UNIX daemons that provide
Shared resources?or shares?to SMB clients on the network. (Shares are sometimes
Called services as well.) These daemons are:
smbd
A daemon that allows file and printer sharing on an SMB network and provides
authentication and authorization for SMB clients.
nmbd
A daemon that looks after the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS), and assist in browsing...