[Samba] Getting Oriented

[Bob of Donelson Trophy]

Everyday I keep up with reading (here on the list) what is going on to
stay abreast of documentation and changes. 

I, like you, have a note book full of printed wiki pages with notes
written in the margins, etc. to detail changes I experienced during
setup of a DC or MEMBER SERVER machine. 

Samba4 is coming along (and "just works!!") The documentation keeps
evolving and getting better. 

If you are new, a simple piece of advise. Be prepared to "think" and
"study" your given issue and you will learn what you need to know. The
info is out there and here on the list. 

The documentation is written to explain (perhaps) different distro
versions therefore, the wiki may not be precise to your particular
distro. Those answers will be here, on the mailing list. 

Thanks for reading my "moment of advise." 

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_______________________________ 

Bob Wooden of Donelson Trophy

615.885.2846
www.donelsontrophy.com [5]

"Everyone deserves an award!!"

On 2015-09-05 21:14, Robert Moskowitz wrote: 

> As Marc recently pointed out, start with:
> 
> https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/User_Documentation [4]
> 
> But for me at least, it has been a learning struggle. There are a number of things you have to add for a running AD besides Samba. See my email on "AD order of installation" to get a feel for what is involved.
> 
> Of course first chooose your Linux distro. Then consider using sernet for your Samba instead of what the distro provides.
> 
> Then go from there.
> 
> On 09/05/2015 08:43 PM, Ross Boylan wrote:
> 
>> It was disconcerting to find the Official HowTo, https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/ [1], to be for Samba 3.5. Much other documentation (both online and Using Samba, 3rd Edition* by *Jay Ts; Gerald Carter; Robert Eckstein, O'Reilly Media, Inc) is also old. Apparently a known problem, http://marc.info/?l=samba&m=139519806107456&w=2 [2], but still.. Web search found https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba4-HOWTO [3], but it's mostly empty. I would appreciate some guidance. Some of the slide presentations for Samba 4 indicate it is intended to be much simpler to setup than Samba 3, and the simplicity will eliminate dependence on outdated web pages. This suggests I should not trust those pages, but there doesn't seem to be any overview available for the current Samba And apparently there is an old (Samba 3ish) and new (ADish) system available, and I'm not sure which I should use. In priority order, my goals are 1. Act as a file server. I'm currently running
samba 3 to do so, and had pretty poor performance attempting to do a Windows backup from a Windows 7 client to it. "Poor" means not only slow, but unable to complete. The client said there wasn't enough room, even though the reported free space (on the client) exceeded the space it said it needed for backup. But perhaps that was only the space it had used so far. 2. Use Windows printers. They require some special drivers and accounting codes. Maybe I could piggy-back off a Windows workstation? 3. Register the machine and services in the Active Directory. 4. Use shared files from the domain. I'm already doing this; it's only last because I don't think samba is involved. Somewhat distinct from that, I also want user management for my Linux machines. I was going to use LDAP and Kerberos, but since they are already in Samba, should I use it? The identities involved would just be for my private use. My Linux systems will all be running in VMs (which might explain some of the poor
performance in point 1; networking with the outside world seems to be a weak point). I think I can do a fresh installation; there's very little setup in my existing samba 3 installation. The typical network client is Windows 7; I think the domain was recently migrated to Windows Server 2012. Currently samba 3 is in workgroup mode. The machines show up in network neighborhood and I can ping them using just the machine name (e.g., markov01) from a Windows command prompt. However, they don't seem to have an existence as FQDNs (e.g., ping markov01.ucsf.edu fails). I guess there's some vestigal NetBIOS naming service still running. I know very little about Active Directory, in particular I'm not sure if any of the AD roles are appropriate for my machine. I don't think I want it to be a domain controller or a member server. I have no administrative rights with respect to the campus AD. My immediate interest in Samba 4 is in overcoming the performance problems noted above for goal 1. I also
have to switch because my distribution, Debian, switched and 3 is unsupported. And I'm hoping to work a little better with AD (goal 2-4). Ross
 

Links:
------
[1] https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/
[2] http://marc.info/?l=samba&m=139519806107456&w=2
[3] https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba4-HOWTO
[4] https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/User_Documentation
[5] http://www.donelsontrophy.com