RSS
|
||||||||||||
  How To Implement SMB on Unix April 5, 1999
Integrating Unix and Windows systems is a pain. Administrators have multiple options for file sharing, printing and terminal emulation--but there's no cross-platform silver bullet. Several different paths make Unix file and print services available to Windows clients, including NFS, NFS gateways or SMB (Server Message Block). NFS requires installing NFS clients on the Windows systems and running PCNFSd on the Unix server for authentication. Although NFS implementations are widespread and well understood, they still pose problems. For example, you must access every Windows client individually and manage users on both the Unix and Windows systems. An NFS gateway, such as WRQ's Reflection NFS Gateway, is a variation on the NFS client theme. It runs on a Windows NT Server and works like an NFS client on that server, mounting NFS file systems exported from Unix and sharing them on the Windows network. This approach removes the problem of "touching" every client and minimizes the impact on the Unix server. But you'll be using two servers to do the job of one, thereby creating a potential bottleneck at the NFS gateway. The third alternative is to install Windows networking compatibility on the Unix server, providing Windows file and print services via SMB. The appeal of this option is that you won't need to touch the Windows clients or tie up an NT server "reserving" Unix file and print services. A number of free, as well as commercial, products provide this functionality, including SAMBA, TotalNet Advanced Server (TAS), AT&T's Advanced Server for Unix and The Santa Cruz Operation's VisionFS. For our purposes, we'll concentrate on implementing SMB on Unix using SAMBA on Solaris. Although the Unix-based SMB solutions offer different bells and whistles--for example, AT&T's Total Advanced Server provides Windows NT PDC (Primary Domain Controller) functionality and TAS offers file and print services for Novell NetWare and Apple Macintosh clients--their ability to provide SMB file and print services works much the same way across the board. On the surface, the SMB-on-Unix solution seems very attractive, but it has its hassles. Running SMB on Unix involves some careful planning with regard to share configuration, user administration and file-name mapping. If you tackle these issues, you'll have a solid, inexpensive file and print solution without any additional hardware--and only a minimal amount of new software--on your network. SAMBA's file and printer share configuration is straightforward, but its user administration issues raise a few eyebrows. In addition, file-name mappings become less of an issue as platforms become more well-suited to handle odd names. You may consider using a Unix server as a Windows PDC or BDC (Backup Domain Controller). Doing so offers more flexibility--you can manage as much of your infrastructure as possible on the Unix side. Although this functionality is rough around the edges in SAMBA, we'll examine the implications. To access a copy of SAMBA, go to www.samba. org, which will provide a list of mirrors so you can choose a SAMBA site near you. On the SAMBA site, you'll find everything you need to get SAMBA up and running, including binaries for multiple platforms, as well as the necessary source distribution and miscellaneous tools. The SAMBA site also includes links to SMB clients for a variety of platforms. I downloaded the source code for SAMBA 1.9.18 and later the source for SAMBA 2.0.2 from the site. SAMBA supports the GNU autoconf utility, which boils down configuration to simply running a configure script on the host. I had no trouble building the SAMBA executables on both SPARC- and Intel-based Solaris boxes.
|
Here
HerePage 1 | 2 | 3 | Next Page |
