1This is version 2.0.X of Samba, the free SMB and CIFS client and 2server for unix and other operating systems. Samba is maintained by 3the Samba Team, who support the original author, Andrew Tridgell. 4 5>>>> Please read THE WHOLE of this file as it gives important information 6>>>> about the configuration and use of Samba. 7 8NOTE: Installation instructions may be found in 9 docs/textdocs/UNIX_INSTALL.txt 10 11This software is freely distributable under the GNU public license, a 12copy of which you should have received with this software (in a file 13called COPYING). 14 15 16WHAT IS SMB? 17============ 18 19This is a big question. 20 21The very short answer is that it is the protocol by which a lot of 22PC-related machines share files and printers and other informatiuon 23such as lists of available files and printers. Operating systems that 24support this natively include Windows NT, OS/2, and Linux and add on 25packages that achieve the same thing are available for DOS, Windows, 26VMS, Unix of all kinds, MVS, and more. Apple Macs and some Web Browsers 27can speak this protocol as well. Alternatives to SMB include 28Netware, NFS, Appletalk, Banyan Vines, Decnet etc; many of these have 29advantages but none are both public specifications and widely 30implemented in desktop machines by default. 31 32The Common Internet Filesystem (CIFS) is what the new SMB initiative 33is called. For details watch http://samba.org/cifs. 34 35 36WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO USE SMB? 37============================== 38 391. Many people want to integrate their Microsoft or IBM style desktop 40 machines with their Unix or VMS (etc) servers. 41 422. Others want to integrate their Microsoft (etc) servers with Unix 43 or VMS (etc) servers. This is a different problem to integrating 44 desktop clients. 45 463. Others want to replace protocols like NFS, DecNet and Novell NCP, 47 especially when used with PCs. 48 49 50WHAT CAN SAMBA DO? 51================== 52 53Here is a very short list of what samba includes, and what it does. For 54many networks this can be simply summarised by "Samba provides a complete 55replacement for Windows NT, Warp, NFS or Netware servers." 56 57- a SMB server, to provide Windows NT and LAN Manager-style file and print 58 services to SMB clients such as Windows 95, Warp Server, smbfs and others. 59 60- a NetBIOS (rfc1001/1002) nameserver, which amongst other things gives 61 browsing support. Samba can be the master browser on your LAN if you wish. 62 63- a ftp-like SMB client so you can access PC resources (disks and 64printers) from unix, Netware and other operating systems 65 66- a tar extension to the client for backing up PCs 67 68- limited command-line tool that supports some of the NT administrative 69 functionality, which can be used on Samba, NT workstation and NT server. 70 71For a much better overview have a look at the web site at 72http://samba.org/samba, and browse the user survey. 73 74Related packages include: 75 76- smbfs, a linux-only filesystem allowing you to mount remote SMB 77filesystems from PCs on your linux box. This is included as standard with 78Linux 2.0 and later. 79 80- tcpdump-smb, a extension to tcpdump to allow you to investigate SMB 81networking problems over netbeui and tcp/ip. 82 83- smblib, a library of smb functions which are designed to make it 84easy to smb-ise any particular application. See 85ftp://samba.org/pub/samba/smblib. 86 87 88CONTRIBUTIONS 89============= 90 91If you want to contribute to the development of the software then 92please join the mailing list. The Samba team accepts patches 93(preferably in "diff -u" format, see docs/BUGS.txt for more details) 94and are always glad to receive feedback or suggestions to the address 95samba@samba.org. We have recently put a new bug tracking 96system into place which should help the throughput quite a lot. You 97can also get the Samba sourcecode straight from the CVS tree - see 98http://samba.org/cvs.html. 99 100You could also send hardware/software/money/jewelry or pizza 101vouchers directly to Andrew. The pizza vouchers would be especially 102welcome, in fact there is a special field in the survey for people who 103have paid up their pizza :-) 104 105If you like a particular feature then look through the CVS change-log 106(on the web at http://samba.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/samba) and see 107who added it, then send them an email. 108 109Remember that free software of this kind lives or dies by the response 110we get. If noone tells us they like it then we'll probably move onto 111something else. However, as you can see from the user survey quite a lot of 112people do seem to like it at the moment :-) 113 114Andrew Tridgell 115Email: samba@samba.org 116 1173 Ballow Crescent 118Macgregor, A.C.T. 1192615 Australia 120 121Samba Team 122Email: samba@samba.org 123 124 125MORE INFO 126========= 127 128DOCUMENTATION 129------------- 130 131There is quite a bit of documentation included with the package, 132including man pages, and lots of .txt files with hints and useful 133info. This is also available from the web page. There is a growing 134collection of information under docs/faq; by the next release expect 135this to be the default starting point. 136 137A list of Samba documentation in languages other than English is 138available on the web page. 139 140If you would like to help with the documentation (and we _need_ help!) 141then have a look at the mailing list samba-docs, archived at 142http://lists.samba.org/ 143 144 145MAILING LIST 146------------ 147 148There is a mailing list for discussion of Samba. To subscribe send 149mail to listproc@samba.org with a body of "subscribe samba Your Name" 150Please do NOT send this request to the list alias instead. 151 152To send mail to everyone on the list mail to samba@listproc.anu.edu.au 153 154There is also an announcement mailing list where new versions are 155announced. To subscribe send mail to listproc@samba.org with a 156body of "subscribe samba-announce Your Name". All announcements also 157go to the samba list. 158 159For details of other Samba mailing lists and for access to archives, see 160http://lists.samba.org/ 161 162 163NEWS GROUP 164---------- 165 166You might also like to look at the usenet news group 167comp.protocols.smb as it often contains lots of useful info and is 168frequented by lots of Samba users. The newsgroup was initially setup 169by people on the Samba mailing list. It is not, however, exclusive to 170Samba, it is a forum for discussing the SMB protocol (which Samba 171implements). The samba list is gatewayed to this newsgroup. 172 173 174WEB SITE 175-------- 176 177A Samba WWW site has been setup with lots of useful info. Connect to: 178 179http://samba.org/samba/ 180 181As well as general information and documentation, this also has searchable 182archives of the mailing list and a user survey that shows who else is using 183this package. Have you registered with the survey yet? :-) 184 185