How to share files with Windows and SMB servers v1.0 by pejvan for the Project:Ω (ProjectOmega.free.Fr -

Transcription

1 1) What is SMB?(from the samba readme file) This is a big question. How to share files with Windows and SMB servers v1.0 by pejvan (pejvan@online.fr) for the Project:Ω (ProjectOmega.free.Fr - The very short answer is that it is the protocol by which a lot of PC-related machines share files and printers and other informatiuon such as lists of available files and printers. Operating systems that support this natively include Windows NT, OS/2, and Linux and add on packages that achieve the same thing are available for DOS, Windows, VMS, Unix of all kinds, MVS, and more. Apple Macs and some Web Browsers can speak this protocol as well. Alternatives to SMB include Netware, NFS, Appletalk, Banyan Vines, Decnet etc; many of these have advantages but none are both public specifications and widely implemented in desktop machines by default. 2)Why do people want ot use SMB?(from the samba readme file) 1. Many people want to integrate their Microsoft or IBM style desktop machines with their Unix or VMS (etc) servers. 2. Others want to integrate their Microsoft (etc) servers with Unix or VMS (etc) servers. This is a different problem to integrating desktop clients. 3. Others want to replace protocols like NFS, DecNet and Novell NCP, especially when used with PCs. 3)The defaut OS X software cost : comes with MacOS X 10.1 You can mount SMB shared folders (by Windows or other Unix OS) thanks to Go... The big problem is that you cannot browse the network to find the shared folders, you have to know the exact path that leads to it. This is kinda useless in a big network... I believe this is something that has not been finalized yet and that will be added later to MacOS X (at least, we can hope that ;-) Anyway here's what you have to do : open the Go...Item in the Window menu. and then type the address in the Address field. You'll use the smb protocol, so the adress you type will look this : smb://hostname/sharename

2 If you did put a valid address, the finder will ask you a login and password, and then mount the shared folder as a volume on your Mac (you can take a look at the screen shot ;-)). 4) Sharity URL : latest version : 2.6 cost : from free to $9500 (site licence) fig1 : the 'about box' What is Sharity? (from the official web site) Sharity is a client for the CIFS (Common Internet File System) protocol, formerly known as SMB (Server Message Block). This is the file-sharing protocol used by Windows NT, 95, 98, 2000, ME, Windows for Workgroups, OS/2, Samba and many others. Sharity mounts these servers in your file system. Mounting means that you can open files directly from the server with any application you

3 like, as if they were on a local disk. Other clients (such as smbclient from the Samba suite) provide only an ftp-like interface where you can copy files to and from the share but cannot open them directly on the server. License Fees The licensing strategy of Sharidy is really uncommun : first, it's open source, I mean you can download the source code. then, there are 3 different licences, Free, Home, and Business : Free licences : Free "Sharity Single" for Home Users / Hobbyists Free Student Licenses (My licence is Student licence, so it's free!! Thanks ;-)) Free Educational Institution Licenses Home licence : allow you to have two client licences for $59 -- that's not too expensive but... Business Licences : starting from $199 (single licence) to $9500 (site licence) -- this is quite expensive!! :-(( The single business licence is as expensive as PCMacLan which is the AppleTalk compatibility tool for Windows users. That's why I want to believe that Sharity is not so expensive but still... Why is sharity so great? 1) Sharity is really easy to install : you only need to copy two folders, and reboot (reboot is not requiered, but it's simpler for common users than launching the daemon in the terminal) 2) it comes with terminal apps for the 'guru level' users :-) 3) it allows you to browse the network like your other friends on Windows : once you've installed it, a little icon will appear in the 'computer' folder and it will allow you to browse through the network and mount volumes as if they were local to your machine. Thus, you can work on files, play videos and everything else without copying those files on your drive (you can take a look at the screenshots). fig2 : the 'computer' folder fig3 : the CIFS folder 4) the basic configuration of Sharity is really simple and works really fine What is not so great about Sharity?

4 1) First big problem : Sharity is only a client, it will NOT allow you to share files with other computers. So if you want to share files, you will have to find another way : using Dave or Samba. Both Dave and Samba enable your computer to act as a server AND a client but Sharity don't... NB : you cannot run Dave and Sharity at the same time, you must choose one. But you can run Sharity and Samba together, hopefully ;-) 2) Sharity does not come with a detailed documentation and the Sharity Configuration tools seems then really complicated for the newbie... Conclusion : Sharity is really a cool tool that allows you so much more than the default OS X tool. If you only need to connect as a client to other computers, and if you can afford the cost, this is what you need. For example, I can afford the cost since I'm a student and I use Samba do share my files, and Sharity as a client. I love it this way ;-) 5) Samba & SWAT URL : latest version : cost : free, GPL licenced software What can samba do? (from the samba readme file) Here is a very short list of what samba includes, and what it does. For many networks this can be simply summarised by "Samba provides a complete replacement for Windows NT, Warp, NFS or Netware servers." - a SMB server, to provide Windows NT and LAN Manager-style file and print services to SMB clients such as Windows 95, Warp Server, smbfs and others. - a NetBIOS (rfc1001/1002) nameserver, which amongst other things gives browsing support. Samba can be the master browser on your LAN if you wish. - a ftp-like SMB client so you can access PC resources (disks and printers) from unix, Netware and other operating systems - a tar extension to the client for backing up PCs - limited command-line tool that supports some of the NT administrative functionality, which can be used on Samba, NT workstation and NT server. compiling & installing [localhost:~/downloads/samba] pejvan% ls samba-latest.tar.gz [localhost:~/downloads/samba] pejvan% tar xzf samba-latest.tar.gz [localhost:~/downloads/samba] pejvan% ls samba samba-latest.tar.gz [localhost:~/downloads/samba] pejvan% cd samba [localhost:samba/samba-2.2.2] pejvan% cd source [localhost:samba/samba-2.2.2/source] pejvan%./configure [localhost:samba/samba-2.2.2/source] pejvan% make [localhost:samba/samba-2.2.2/source] pejvan% make install Configuring (adapted from the samba edit (and create if needed) the smb.conf file (if you have not changed the default path in the Makefile, you'll find it in test your smb.conf file with testparm : [localhost:local/samba/lib] pejvan% pwd /usr/local/samba/lib [localhost:local/samba/lib] pejvan% testparm Load smb config files from /usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf Processing section "[homes]" Loaded services file OK. if OK, continue, else there is something wrong, you should figure out where you have made mistakes in the smb.conf starting smbd and nmbd I believe it's a better choice to run the smbd and mbd in with the inetd, as the other services provided by MacOS X. You just need to add the following commands in the /etc/inetd.conf file (this is from the default path, if you changed the path before installing... you know what to do here ;-) : #SAMBA NetBIOS services netbios-ssn stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/bin/smbd smbd netbios-ns dgram udp wait root /usr/local/bin/nmbd nmbd

5 Note that all the binaries have been installed in /usr/local/bin but I think it would be cleaner to install the servers in one of the /usr/sbin or /sbin/ or /usr/local/sbin... You can change that while running the configure script or edit the Makefile file Then relauch the inetd daemon with the following commands : sudo kill -HUP `cat /var/run/inetd.pid` Test the listing of the files you're sharing : [localhost:samba/samba-2.2.2/source] pejvan% smbclient -L localhost added interface ip= bcast= nmask= Password: Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 2.2.2] Sharename Type Comment homes Disk par ici les gateries IPC$ IPC IPC Service (la babasse de pej) ADMIN$ Disk IPC Service (la babasse de pej) pejvan Disk par ici les gateries Server Comment Workgroup Master NONE PEJVAN WORKGROUP SPARC Try connecting with the installed Unix client : smbclient [localhost:samba/samba-2.2.2/source] pejvan% smbclient //localhost/pejvan added interface ip= bcast= nmask= Password: Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 2.2.2] smb: \> ls [...] I highly recommend that you use SWAT to configure your samba server. SWAT is a kind of Graphical User Interface to help configure samba. It's a web server and it generates the smb.conf file from the web forms you fill in your browser. Plus it's very easy and straightforward. I contains all the samba documentation in html format too. In order to do this, you'll have to edit your /etc/inetd.conf file one last time. Add this just after your SAMBA commands : # SWAT configtool (Part of Samba) swat stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/local/samba/bin/swat /usr/local/bin/swat Please note that earlier version of OmniWeb won't work for swat (OmniWeb will unexpectedly quit). This bug seems to have been fixed in OmniWeb Internet Explorer works fine too. Here are some screenshots to let you see how easy it can be to administrate samba with SWAT :

6 fig 1 : swat home with all the documentation

7 fig2 : swat global preferences

8 fig3 : swat shares

9 fig4 : swat server status (with the currently logged users and locked files) 6) Dave for OS X URL : latest version : 3.1b4 cost : $149 (sigle licence) to $2299 (25 licences) NB : the OS X version is in free public beta test ( PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU CANNOT RUN MULTIPLE SMB CLIENTS OR SERVERS AT THE SAME TIME : YOU MUST DISABLE SAMBA AND SHARITY TO USE DAVE. Dave is a great utility that combines the advantages of Sharity and Samba : you can browse the network, mount volumes, and share your files really easily. If you are not afraid of beta software, and you don't want to use multiple apps, then simply try the public beta of Dave. Previous versions of Dave used to work vert well on MacOS < X and the reading of the mailing list's digest proves me that the developers are working hard to make a great 3.1 version. Dave is really REALLY impressing. Why? Because it's effective and really simple to use. First, it comes with an installer (and an uninstaller) and documentation, which Sharity does not. Then it has a SetUpAssistant, which will ask you a few questions and sets up DAVE for you :

10 fig1 : the DAVE Setup Assistant Then, it's tightly integrated in the Finder and MacOS X : it has three Control Panels in the System Preferences application which allow you to easily configure DAVE. Just take a look the screenshots and their captions for more details ;-) fig2 : the general view of the System Preferences fig3 : you can ask for a log in procedure, like Windows do

11 fig4 : seting up your identity for smb is that easy! fig5 : notice the cool feature which allows you to chose your connection ports

12 fig6 : you can share files and printers with DAVE, and adding a shared item is really easy : just select it with the dialog box or drag and drop the folder or drive you want to share. A dialog wil l then show up in order to allow you to configure the access privileges With DAVE, you can use the 'Go...' Menu to connect and mount shared volumes on your Mac. fig7 : the 'Connect to Server...' menu item Conclusion : DAVE is a fantastic utility. It allows you both the sharing of your files and the browsing and mounting of shared volumes. It's still beta software at the time being, so maybe it wont work perfectly for your special use. I did not had any problem with it but I have a rather limited hardware, network and no printer... Anyway, reading the beta testing mailing list showed me that there was not any big problem and the small glitches mentioned were almost always for very special configurations. I definitely recommend this great program! 7) Links :

13 Dave (current Dave version : 3.1 public beta 4) you can download it from here : but you'll have to subscribe to the beta testers mailing list first (which provides a really great help) SambaX (current samba version : Samba 2.2.2) Samba (current version 2.2.2) Sharity (current version 2.6) Samba Server Config Tool (SSCT) (current version 2.10) (more downloads, like sources on the web site) Samba-HOWTO-Collection.pdf A pdf document, which is a collection of several docs about Samba. available from Samba.org and in the software packages SMB-HOWTO available in many formats, this howto is really usefull too. available from linuxdoc.org web site. 8) FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) nil 9) History v october 2001 : initial release 10) TO DO list *) wait for user comments and updated software ;-) Please feel free to send me any feedback, any comment, in order to make this guide better. Thanks for reading me, Pejvan BEIGUI (pejvan@online.fr)