REVIEWS

Bridging Network Worlds With Server Message Block-Based File Services

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In this review, we implemented SMB atop NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NBT) since IP is Unix's default protocol. SMB also can function at the networking layer--NetBEUI or NetBIOS/Frame (NBF)--and over IPX. NT, on the other hand, supports these protocol-connectivity options.

We put two workgroup-level solutions to the test in our San Mateo, Calif., lab. We tested products that let Windows clients access files and printers on a Unix server without having to add a single byte of software to the client other than the required Microsoft networking compone nts. We looked at a shareware product, SAMBA, and a commercial product from The Santa Cruz Operation, VisionFS 1.1.

To our surprise, the SAMBA product excelled in Unix OS support, features and reliability. SCO VisionFS, which does provide better documentation and a more user-friendly interface, falters in its attempt to emulate Windows networking and is not as feature-rich as SAMBA. Both are confined by the limitations of Microsoft networking and SMBs, but each did a good job of making our Unix server available to our Windows clients.

SAMBA

In most cases, the Windows networking administrator will work with a Unix system administrator to set up the proper resources and access rights. Be prepared to manually edit several files and manually install the binaries--there is no install routine such as the one found in VisionFS. In addition, there is no user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for SAMBA. SAMBA performed marginally better than VisionFS on reads and writes. In our performance testing, the Unix server with SAMBA was approximately 8 percent faster when reading files and 3 percent faster when writing than VisionFS. When we performed a copy command from Windows, SAMBA transferred the 15 MB of files about 1.5 seconds faster than VisionFS. Again, SAMBA was faster, but only by a fraction.

SAMBA, unlike VisionFS, supports both user- and share-level security. However, neither product can act as a domain controller in a Windows domain, nor can they access the Windows security database for user authentication. This limits their funct ionality for workgroup environments. Although VisionFS does not directly support share-level security, it can emulate it so it appears that share-level security is enabled.

To accommodate the differences in password case sensitivity (Unix passwords are case-sensitive but Windows for Workgroups and Windows95 passwords are not), both SAMBA and VisionFS can be configured to alter the case of each letter in the password to find a match with the Unix password. This, however, has two negative side effects: It reduces security and increases overhead on the Unix system, slowing the system.

SAMBA can be a browse master on the network and act as a Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) server via NetBIOS name-to-IP address resolution. SCO's VisionFS lacks the WINS server capability, but according to SCO, WINS server functionality will be in the next version. One feature SAMBA lacks with its WINS server is the ability to replicate its WINS database with NT-based WINS servers. Why? The replication process is not openly documented. We did attempt to use the SAMBA as the WINS server for our NT 3.51 client, but for some reason NT 3.51 did not function; we received several networking errors and were unable to start the server service. Although the WINS service is a good feature, most users would be better off using the NT WINS server in a production environment. To download a copy of SAMBA or obtain more information about the application, see lake.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba.