Using Samba

Order (or just read more about) Using Samba- Eckstein. Collier-Brown & Kelly

This is the O'Reilly treatment of Samba, and it is also the book "Officially adopted by the Samba team". It includes a CDROM that has source and binaries for Samba 2.0.5a. This definitely is the best Samba book I've read yet. It is complete, it explains both the Windows and Unix aspects of SMB, and it includes detailed examples with appropriate diagrams and screen shots. The only possible complaint I could make is that 2.1 came out in time for references to get into the text- I wouldn't say these are confusing, and it's good that they were able to include such late breaking changes, but it's still just a little disconcerting.

Explaining how things work on the Windows side is very important, and this does a more than excellent job without making you feel like you are reading a Windows book- the tone of this is definitely Samba on Unix. There's an extensive trouble-shooting section and even sections on performance tuning and setting it up to use SSL.

I haven't yet installed Samba (I've been using Visionfs on SCO and just haven't had a need for it yet on Linux), and one of the reasons I've been putting it off is that the previous books I have looked at haven't left me feeling entirely prepared. After reading this, I feel much more confident.

Publish your articles, comments, book reviews or opinions here!

Looking for Mac OS X Help?
OS X PDF e-books
Inexpensive, instant download

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.