[ Thanks to Mayank
for this link. ]
“Windows based machines use the SMB protocol to share files,
printers and communicate. This is a proprietary protocol and
Windows doesn’t integrate as well with non-Windows networks using
other protocols. It is possible to share files between PC’s running
Linux and Windows using FTP or HTTP but it isn’t as transparent a
process. Print services are also a problem. Samba is a terrific
software that bridges the gap between Linux and Windows PC’s on the
network. File sharing and print services are a lot more transparent
though it’s a lot easier from the Windows end.”
“Samba is available at www.samba.org or your local mirror. Most
distributions already come with the Samba binaries on the cd so you
should look there first. At the web-site you will find both the
source and the binaries for download. Samba has also been ported to
OS/2, Amiga and VMS so even if you are on a non-Unix system then
you need not worry. The latest version as of writing this article
is 2.0.7 though I have used version 2.0.6 here in this article.
Download and install and then check out the example smb.conf files
in the examples directory. If you downloaded the source code then
it should be under a documentation directory.”
“All the configuration of Samba is contained in the file
smb.conf which can be found in /etc. The Samba configuration is
divided into various sections or shares. Each section begins with a
share name enclosed between square brackets ( [Public] or [Noname]
) and under each section are defined the options. Each option is
followed by ‘=’ after which the option parameters are given. The
parameters may be ‘yes’,’no’, or some user-defined parameter. There
are quite a few parameters and options in Samba but not all of them
are required to get you started.”