Samba: Less Important Because Windows Is Less Important 162
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes "Interview Bruce Byfield did with me after the Samba 4.0 release. Discusses interactions with Microsoft, the future of the code and project, and many other things."
Re: samba - racist (Score:5, Informative)
Not important? (Score:3, Informative)
So, integrating old machines running legacy systems with newer/different platform servers is less important?
Re: samba - racist (Score:3, Informative)
Funny, I thought Sambo was a martial art. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28martial_art%29
Re:Comedy silver (Score:5, Informative)
As the person who wrote that comment, I see no contradiction here. Samba 4.0 is needed because it updates everything adding Active Directory protocols. If for some reason all Windows system die tomorrow, Samba 4.0 is less important because the main use of it is Windows interoperability, actual samba is pretty useful for basic file sharing, and if you remove one of the uses of it to something, it become less important. Samba AD integration is not used for Linux system, it is just for Windows clients.
A project to follow for equivalent functionality of AD for pure Linux system is FreeIPA (still a lot of development ahead but the architecture is good)
Re:Too bad SMB is so slow (Score:5, Informative)
It's all in how the server is configured, and if the client will pipeline requests.
I can easily saturate a gigabit network using modern Linux CIFSFS and Samba. Ensure you turn on pthread based aio on the server, and the client now issues multiple outstanding read/write requests.
SMB2 makes this easier as it does this by default even on Windows clients. Ensuring your server has the pthread-based aio is the key though (depending on server CPU availablilty - on low end systems some OEM's get more mileage by using zero-copy sendfile/recvfile instead).
Jeremy.
Re: samba - racist (Score:3, Informative)
Samba is a dance.
Yes. And when we let Microsoft lead, they keep stepping on everyone's toes. I'm going to a friend's office soon to find out why the addition of one stinking Windows 8 system has broken all the file sharing between her existing Vista, Windows 7 and XP systems.
Re:R I G H T (Score:4, Informative)
In our office we have a 2 TB NAS for backing up desktops and posting files that need to be shared to the whole office. Guess what it runs? Linux + samba + a custom web interface. The fun thing about SAMBA these days is that a lot of people running it don't realize they are running it.
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Informative)
No, you're getting the history the wrong way around.
Samba was started in '92. The web wasn't on most companies radar until the late 90's.
Web and database on Linux came in the door opened by file servers :-).
Our original platform was SunOS (not even Solaris). When Samba started Linux was a toy, it didn't even have networking.
Jeremy.
Re:First posting? (Score:2, Informative)
Jeremy I have no doubt you know when Samba was started but started and widely adopted are two different things.
I certainly saw no sign of serious samba deployment until after serious Linux deployment and in most organization that was after the Linux boxes were first deployed (at least deployments that stuck) in roles that were previously owned by UNIX such as web/ftp/dns and for a while email but exchange ended up winning email. It wasn't until after a company already had Linux working and proven as a reliable source of a cheap dust collector that just works before they would risk more directly desktop interfacing tasks to it like file/print and auth.
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Informative)
No, I also know when it was first widely adopted. I was around and shepherded it through that remember. It really took off around 1994 when we had very wide use on SunOS and early Solaris use.
Wider Linux use really didn't start until about until 1996 or so. I remember tridge and I being amazed that making it work on Linux became more important than making it work on SunOS/Solaris/HPUX and other commercial UNIXes.
Jeremy.