Samba
In a Nutshell - CIW Course Section 3, Part B1, Chapter 7
Samba
The name Samba is a play on the acronym SMB which, in turn, stands for Server Message Block which is, not surprisingly, the protocol it uses. SMB is the Microsoft protocol for sharing files and printers and executing commands through TCP connections.
Samba provides interoperability between Unix and Windows systems. Samba consists of two daemons, the first is /usr/sbin/nmbd which provides NetBIOS names over the network. The second is /usr/sbin/smbd running services to provide file and printer sharing. Samba configuration files are in the /etc/samba directory although this may vary between flavours of Unix and Linux.
Samba Features
- Allows a Unix system to participate in WINS as a client or server
- Makes a Unix system appear as a Windows 2000 compatible file and print server
- Enables a Unix system to act as a Windows NT 4.0 controller
- Deploys Unix systems to obtain backups of Windows systems
SWAT Overview
The Samba Web Administration Tool (SWAT) as the name implies is a Web tool and will run from Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. By default, SWAT is configured to use port 901 so, from the machine running SWAT http://120.0.0.1:901 will access the Administration tool. It can be accessed from any Web Browser after it has been correctly configured in xinetd (Extended Internet Services Daemon).
When you first access SWAT from a Web Browser you will see the Home Page. There are a number of pages available for the administrator to use:
Globals Page: Is were the most basic elements are configured so
that the Unix server can perform NetBIOS name resolution.
Shares Page: Is where shares and access may be configured.
Printers Page: Is where printers are configured for sharing with
Windows systems.
Status Page: Access to the system may be monitored from here, and
the smbd and nmbd daemons can be stopped and restarted.
View Page: This displays the contents of the /etc/samba/smb.conf
file.
Password Page: Create new user names and passwords for Samba
administrators.
Before SWAT can be enabled, there are two files which must be edited. The etc/services file contains the port number the service will use. The default entry should read 901/tcp. The /etc/xinetd.d/swat file is part of the xinetd system and should be as follows:
| # default: off #description: SWAT is the Samba Web Admin Tool. Use swat \ # to configure your Samba server. To use SWAT, \ # connect to port 901 with your favorite web browser. service swat { disable = no port = 901 socket_type = stream wait = no only_from = 127.0.0.1 user = root server = /usr/sbin/swat log_on_failure += USERID }
|
The course does cover the installation of SWAT but it is fairly verbose, with lots of screen-shots, so I shan't cover it here.