samba — A Windows AD and SMB/CIFS fileserver for UNIX
samba
The Samba software suite is a collection of programs that implements the Server Message Block (commonly abbreviated as SMB) protocol for UNIX systems and provides Active Directory services. The first version of the SMB protocol is sometimes also referred to as the Common Internet File System (CIFS). For a more thorough description, see http://www.ubiqx.org/cifs/. Samba also implements the NetBIOS protocol in nmbd.
The samba daemon provides the
Active Directory services and file and print services to
SMB clients. The configuration file
for this daemon is described in smb.conf(5).
The smbd daemon provides the file and print services to
SMB clients. The configuration file
for this daemon is described in smb.conf(5).
The nmbd
daemon provides NetBIOS nameservice and browsing
support. The configuration file for this daemon
is described in smb.conf(5).
winbindd is a daemon
that is used for integrating authentication and
the user database into unix.
The smbclient
program implements a simple ftp-like client. This
is useful for accessing SMB shares on other compatible
SMB servers, and can also be used
to allow a UNIX box to print to a printer attached to
any SMB server.
The samba-tool
is the main Samba Administration tool regarding
Active Directory services.
The testparm
utility is a simple syntax checker for Samba's smb.conf(5) configuration file.
In AD server mode samba-tool testparm
should be used though.
The smbstatus
tool provides access to information about the
current connections to smbd.
The nmblookup
tool allows NetBIOS name queries to be made.
The smbpasswd
command is a tool for setting passwords on local Samba but
also on remote SMB servers.
The smbcacls command is
a tool to set ACL's on remote SMB servers.
The smbtree command
is a text-based network neighborhood tool.
The smbtar can make
backups of data directly from SMB servers.
smbspool is a
helper utility for printing on printers connected
to SMB servers.
smbcontrol is a utility
that can change the behaviour of running
samba, smbd, nmbd and
winbindd daemons.
rpcclient is a utility
that can be used to execute RPC commands on remote
SMB servers.
The pdbedit command
can be used to maintain the local user database on
a Samba server.
The net command
is the main administration tool for Samba member and
standalone servers.
wbinfo is a utility
that retrieves and stores information related to winbind.
profiles is a command-line
utility that can be used to replace all occurrences of
a certain SID with another SID.
log2pcap is a utility
for generating pcap trace files from Samba log
files.
vfstest is a utility
that can be used to test vfs modules.
ntlm_auth is a helper-utility
for external programs wanting to do NTLM-authentication.
smbcquotas is a tool to
manage quotas on remote SMB servers.
The Samba suite is made up of several components. Each component is described in a separate manual page. It is strongly recommended that you read the documentation that comes with Samba and the manual pages of those components that you use. If the manual pages and documents aren't clear enough then please visit https://devel.samba.org for information on how to file a bug report or submit a patch.
If you require help, visit the Samba webpage at https://www.samba.org/ and explore the many option available to you.
The Samba software suite is licensed under the GNU Public License(GPL). A copy of that license should have come with the package in the file COPYING. You are encouraged to distribute copies of the Samba suite, but please obey the terms of this license.
The latest version of the Samba suite can be obtained from https://download.samba.org/pub/samba/.
The Samba Wiki at https://wiki.samba.org has also a lot of useful information. On the Samba mailing list at https://lists.samba.org you can find a lot of information in the archives and you can subscribe to the samba list and ask for help or discuss things.
If you wish to contribute to the Samba project, then I suggest you join the Samba mailing list at https://lists.samba.org.
If you have patches to submit, visit
https://devel.samba.org/
for information on how to do it properly. We prefer patches
in git format-patch format.
Contributors to the project are now too numerous
to mention here but all deserve the thanks of all Samba
users. To see a full list, look at the
change-log in the source package
for the pre-CVS changes and at
https://git.samba.org/
for the contributors to Samba post-GIT. GIT is the Open Source
source code control system used by the Samba Team to develop
Samba. The project would have been unmanageable without it.