[Samba] Some doubts.

[Bradley W. Langhorst]

looks like most of your questions have been answered
i'll just add a little

  
>  
> 2 What is the benefit of having the shared directory on a XFS partition?
XFS is a very nice file system - you don't have to worry so much about
disk corruption if your system loses power and you get the ACLs which
some people really value.
> 4 Perhaps someone can advise me of what are the minimum Linux installation
> for having just Samba and some administration?
if you really want a bare bones system you could use the the
leaf.sourceforge.net project which fits on a floppy.  I'm pretty sure
you can get samba running on that.
another possibility for an efficient system is debian - I think it is
the easiest distribution to adminstrate because of the very smooth
upgrade tools.
> 5 What is the best practice for updating a Samba installation?
I make a new RPM or .deb and do an rpm -Uvh or dpkg -i  

I think one week is a pretty short amount of time for someone with no
unix experience to get things up and running - congratulations!

brad