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."
First posting? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Still important :-P
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Samba at home for my media file shares, and probably still would have even if Windows interoperability wasn't an issue, it's widely supported by most non-Windows OSes (except iOS, the first OS where you need to pay to add on a Samba client. Progress!)
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I consider Samba the first option to share any file between any two machines on the same network, regardless of platform. Primarily because (almost) every platform supports it, and secondly because it is both easy to set up for quickly sharing something, and powerful to accommodate teams.
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It's also easier to set up than nfs4+kerberos!
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No it's not. If you want the full functionality of NFS4+Kerberos, you need to set up your Samba server as a full Domain Member server in an Active Directory domain, which is quite a task in itself.
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What I meant was that if all you want is file sharing between Linux machines, using smbfs and samba is easier than nfs4+kerberos.
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If you want the same level of authentication, then no, it is not easier.
And if you don't care about authentication, then you can run nfs4 without kerberos, which is not harder than deploying samba without authentication.
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Same level of authentication? I thought NTLMv2 is pretty darn good. The only thing you lose by not using Kerberos is single sign-on, I'd think.
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Insightful)
And it still probably won't come with an offer for source code (sigh :-).
Jeremy.
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It doesn't have to, it is GPLv3, not v2. Unless they modified it. see here if you don't believe me [gnu.org]
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You just answered your own question.
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Samba is absolutely still important. We just take SAMBA for granted now more than ever because it is pre-installed everywhere in almost every appliance. For example buy a $20 internet 'router' from Best Buy that can share a connected USB drive over a LAN and it probably uses SAMBA for functionality.
Agreed.
Samba is not seen as a big issue these days because it works so incredibly well. Software only gets your attention when it fails.
As for Windows not being as important, that simply is not the case in corporate america. In fact the only reason Linux exists in the corporate world is because of Samba. Any growth if Linux in the server or workstation role is due principally to Samba, and without it there would be virtually zero Linux adaptation in the workplace. Businesses are natural mono-cultures when it comes to computing systems.
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Interesting)
You say this while I've got a power point presentation open about our new "lets put everyone on Virtual machines and have them remote in via linux terminals!" Something I never thought I'd see. It's not going to happen tomorrow but we're never going to Windows 8 or above. That's relatively clear. Microsoft nailed their own coffin shut.
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So you have never heard of webservers?
DNS? NTP? FTP?
All of those are commonly run on Linux. Businesses are not natural mono-cultures. Lots of businesses use many different computing systems and it has been that way since there were computing systems.
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Interesting)
Strange, nearly 20 years and 10 companies as a Linux admin and Samba has always been a slight afterthought, rarely used. I always figured if it wasn't for exchange windows wouldn't even exist in the corporate world any more.
Re:First posting? (Score:5, Funny)
FLASH: Man with Linux colored classes sees only Linux machines.
Film at 11.
Re:First posting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Once you get into bigger problems and more demanding SLAs, the prevalance of Windows declines rather quickly.
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Yup outlook/exchange. I've never understood what is so great a technical challenge in developing open solutions that replace these well but when something pops up it seems to focus on only one piece of this or it provides calendar and email but as separate pieces within the suite and not tying and integrating all the pieces together the way exchange does.
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There are great alternatives for Groupware. However people don't actually want exchange, they want outlook. It's a tool they are familiar with and have built up years of workflow around it. It's horrible, unstable, ugly, but people cling to it. It's a safety blanket.
I reckon the current version of Zimbra is looking to be quite a suitable replacement and it's built using OSS products. There are paid for enterprise versions, which get you things like ActiveSync (presumably they have to pay MS for a license to
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Because a one-protocol-for-everything is an awful philosophy. It means that you can't change parts you don't like, or replace individual servers - since it's only own monolithic piece.
Sure, it's easier for the end user - but that's just a matter of creating better clients with better support for autoconfiguration (for which standards exist).
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Yeah. Historically.
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Exchange is currently a piece of shit too. There just isn't a non piece of shit alternative. If you just needed email and a directory there are much better less bloated and more efficient solutions but alas you don't just just need a directory and a mail server.
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You are forgetting the shared calendar/tasks and their tight email integration. The idea that giving people a calendar or a directory based addresses gave them an exchange/outlook alternative is the reason most of the alternatives aren't viable.
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If you think Linux exists because of Samba, I'd like to remind you of a company called Oracle. They are the most important in corporate america. Windows doesn't mean shit in the big picture.
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I suggest you look at the link I posted. I think you will find you are utterly and hopelessly misinformed.
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I'm sorry but you simply don't speak for what is the case in corporate america. The only place you see windows or samba needing to replace it is on desktops, file and print servers and often authentication ties (so as to support single sign-on) and exchange. In most of those cases it is only used because it easy and popular. And thanks to Samba 4 you could drop windows from all of that but exchange and the desktops. At the end of the day the main reason you use windows/samba for print/auth is that you alrea
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Put down the crack pipe, it's warping your mind.
Corporate America runs on Windows desktops and laptops, and the vast majority of servers on the WAN are Windows. Webservers and other public-facing servers are a hodge-podge of various OS.
The proof would be in the job postings on sites like dice.com, monster.com, etc. - I invite you to compare the number of Windows admi
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"The proof would be in the job postings on sites like"
That isn't proof of anything. You need 3 or 4 windows admins for every Linux admin required to administer the same number of systems. There is also far more turn-over in windows spots. Many organizations call the guys who work on those windows desktops and laptops admins as well. That and because some types of organizations require lots and lots of local offices and those organizations often are forced to deploy a windows server at each of those location
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It works well when it's Windows to Windows or Windows to a stable version of SAMBA that is fairly modern.
It's flakey between mixed hosts of Mac, Windows and Linux systems (like media servers) that are on different versions SAMBA.
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.
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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 relia
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.
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I'm sure you'd know better than my anecdotal experience.
In my world Novell Netware ran this space until post NT 4 and NT 4 wasn't released until 1996. By the time we were seeing and recommending Linux/Samba combinations as replacements Linux had already established itself running web boxes. But then I wasn't working in the enterprise back then. Most of the companies we did work for had under 50 seats.
Very interesting stuff. I didn't know about Samba's history on commercial UNIX. But that's all ancient histo
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Not true at all. Actually, the reason Linux exists is because of web and database servers. File serving came in because of the door opened by the previous two.
Your sense of history is sort of warped.
The vast majority of businesses with in-house web servers probably stated with Microsoft web servers, and were forced to abandon that idea when growth (and insecurity) made it no longer tenable. Same for Database servers.
But to complete your education, walk into any modern office, and count the number of Linux desktops.
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"Servers" meant Unix machines for about 10 years before Windows had networking capability. Oracle reached version 5 on Unix before it was ported to DOS (Oracle 5 for DOS never really worked anyway).
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walk into any modern office, and count the number of Linux desktops
I'm interested in your estimate. I think it is 0 or close to 0, but I work in a specific industry (gamedev) and can have MS bias.
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I'm talking about Main-Street businesses. Not Wall Street businesses.
Look around you for pete sake. Business does not begin with GM and end at the NYSE.
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An operation like that may just as likely be using a Unix based appliance. Even for small businesses, server components are no longer Windows only. In some case, the client side of the vertical apps aren't Windows only anymore either.
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Yeah, except Samba 4 is less important than Samba 3.
Samba is/was useful because it interfaces many different systems together, providing file and print services based on those other systems.
Samba 4 doesn't do this. It is those "other systems" - it's the whole ball of wax, and you have no option to not make it be your DNS or authentication backend. This is almost entirely useless for eg. people using other systems for authentication as their backend (LDAP) already who do not want to make Samba 4, a stack whi
SAMBA everywhere (Score:2)
That being said, I'd MUCH rather use something that's better documented. SAMBA is used on all sorts of linux enabled media servers and the fact of the matter is it does not always work. Especially with other systems that are trying to implement SMB/CIFS like my Mac (no longer SAMBA from Apple) or media servers with differing versions of SAMBA the result is often buggy or something not working at all.
ChromeOS Team Disagrees (Score:3)
Unsurprisingly... ;)
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=160570 [google.com]
Really makes Chrome devices a pain in the ass when it comes to network shares. :/
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Comedy silver (Score:5, Funny)
Earlier today I read a man complaining to Slashdot that Linux only has two data sharing options "off" and "configure 400 settings." He was answerred with a post of "just use Samba."
And then, this.
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)
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AD inegration is important for small, medium, and large businesses if you want to connectivity to be "out of the box" easy.
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I don't see why AD integration is needed for a small business, even some medium ones, that only is true if you run Windows clients. I have clients running pure Linux environments (one that you can call medium sized, a Hospital), for what will I need AD integration?
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I'm not saying they couldn't have managed without it, but if the powers that be happened to pick AD, then that small business is using AD, whether you think it necessary or not.
We aren't looking for 'is it possible for a small business to avoid AD', we are looking for 'is it true that *currently* AD is not a significant player in small to me
Windows is more open (Score:2)
Samba is less important because windows is more open. Other than hosting cifs shares there is now little you can't do in the server room without Samba. Samba certainly makes things easier in that as others have pointed out "it just works". The fact is today AD is at the core the identity system many enterprises use.
The good news is that with nss_ldap, the mit kerberos package and little else you are off to the races now. It takes a little setup Samba would do for you, but a couple cron jobs to keep kerb
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Re:Windows is more open (Score:4, Interesting)
They're not going to do that. The director of Windows server development at Microsoft even gave us a quote for the Samba 4 press release.
https://www.samba.org/samba/news/releases/4.0.0.html [samba.org]
For the tl;dr crowd:
"Active Directory is a mainstay of enterprise IT environments, and Microsoft is committed to support for interoperability across platforms," said Thomas Pfenning, director of development, Windows Server. "We are pleased that the documentation and interoperability labs that Microsoft has provided have been key in the development of the Samba 4.0 Active Directory functionality."
Thanks a *lot* Thomas !
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An ActiveDirectory infastructure is unlikely in anything but a "big business". Anything smaller is simply not going to bother.
Certainly a "small business" isn't going to touch AD. They have neither the requirements nor the dedicated staff to manage it.
AD is for environments large enough that they might be using LDAP in their server room.
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That is not how small businesses use AD. They don't know what an OU is because they take the default, they have a single dom
Ad integration (Score:2)
I usually react to ad integration by switching to a different program . . .
hawk
Re:Comedy silver (Score:5, Insightful)
If for some reason all Windows system die tomorrow,
Other than that 800 pound gorilla in the room, there is nobody else around....
Hand waiving away 90% of the desktop OS users [wikipedia.org] to make a point about samba being less important seems reaching at best.
I think you could safely make the if for some reason Samba dies tomorrow, Linux in the workplace gets shoveled into the same grave.
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You could either have Samba which can serve a pure Linux environment just fine or even cleanly cope with Windows servers.
On the other hand, FreeIPA can serve a pure Linux environment, perhaps a strict subset of samba capability.
I think FreeIPA was more critically important as it was a faster path to directory based authentication and claimed to be much more production ready than Samba 4.0 claimed to be. I think with Samba 4.0, an inflect
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Hahahah ! Actually, that's comedy *gold*.
man smb.conf :-).
Not important? (Score:3, Informative)
So, integrating old machines running legacy systems with newer/different platform servers is less important?
Too bad SMB is so slow (Score:3)
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the latest versions of the SMB protocol were a bit more asynchronous and high-performance. But using older versions, I found SMB (Samba on one end, CIFS on the other, in general), could not saturate a gigabit ethernet link, while NFS and AFP could. I kept using it because for compatibility but stuck with NFS or AFP for performance, AFP more now that Netatalk 3.x sucks so much less than Netatalk 2.x. (Netatalk 2.x suffered from various problems like random connection drops.)
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.
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Take a look at SMB3 (released with Windows 8/Windows Server 2012) and I believe with experimental support in Samba 4(?). Massive improvements in speed, bandwidth utilisation and overall chattiness. It's quite a different beast.
Importance not related to Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
One trend is the growing use of virtual disks in VMs to provide storage. This is just stupidity. Shared files server users far better than virtual disks do. Files are not created for OSs, they are a mechanism for sharing information between users.
The other trend is away from NAS and towards object storage. That is a good trend, but not one that will make NAS protocols obsolete anytime soon.
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Skewed perspective... (Score:4, Interesting)
I had it in my career too. Back in the mid-90s, Linux was used sparingly in certain industries and Windows dominated the workplace. To survive, Linux systems did almost always have to play ball.
That balance *has* changed, but not quite that much, though perception of what is going on is very very contingent on career path. About 2003 or so, I was going from place to place with significant Linux footprint, but unavoidable Windows instances. As my experience progressed, opportunities that I pursued afforded me the chance to gravitate to nearly Linux exclusive businesses and organizations. If you are a top notch Linux developer, your reality will change so that Windows will not be a large role.
In relatively recent history, my career has had me participate in more wider sampling of companies with significantly complex IT organizations, despite my recent Linux-exclusive career. I realized that while *my* world had changed, the business world at large was still where it was about 7 years ago with respect to Windows footprint.
Particularly someone as renouned as Allison is likely to have his world changed for more than typical...
Summary by the Hulk (Score:2)
Interview Bruce Byfield did with me after the Samba 4.0 release.
Next week, Hulk interview Steve Ballmer. Goodnight puny humans!
Is S4 release a part of 12.04LTS repository yet? (Score:2)
Windows is not less important (Score:2)
In the world of industrial automation, windows unfortunately seems to reign supreme. Just about every development environment for PLC and PAC controllers is windows and .Net based. And as of late, PC based automation (think PC based PLC/PAC) is becoming more popular and guess what is the primary platform? Windows. You might be thinking "How the hell can windows be used in a hard real-time application?" Well it is possible and the first time I ever saw it was in the Aerotech A3200 platform. Its a pretty neat
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Huh. No wonder Stuxnet was such a success.
Thank you, Jeremy Allison! (Score:4, Interesting)
Jeremy,
Since you're hanging about, let me take the opportunity to say thanks for making such a vital, useful and wonderful piece of software - and thanks to the rest of the Samba team, too.
I've used it at work over the decades, I use it at home even now. It's made my life better. That is not at all hyperbole.
I know that this is Slashdot, but it wouldn't hurt to say thanks, right?
Cheers!
Re: samba - racist (Score:5, Informative)
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Funny, I thought Sambo was a martial art. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28martial_art%29
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It's funny - laugh.
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In Spanish, especially in conquered Latin America, zambo was one of the (many) technical terms used to specify the different mixes resulting from white (Spanish), native american, and blacks, and their descendants. Specifically, zambo(a) was the first generation of the mix between native american and black.
It's current usage is obviously broader and informal, and no longer a "racist" term per se.
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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.
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Picture Rachel McLish, but blond.
maybe she just told you it did so that you'd go to her office after hours. Ever think about that?
Except for her husband. Picture Dolph Lundgren, with normal hair. And glasses. I'd never pick on someone wearing glasses. I'm just a nice guy that way.
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No, Sampo was a magic item in the Kalevela that brought fortune to its holder.
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I thought Sambos turned into Denny's.
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I thought Sambos turned into Denny's.
Like the tiger turned into butter?
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Samba is just a form of dance AFAIK...now change that last A to an O, and that's something different...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(disambiguation) [wikipedia.org]
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SMB exists in the corpoare environment only so this is a non issue outside the office.
Eh? Most consumer grade NAS on the marker are accessed via SMB (and run Samba on Linux).
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.
Home SMB (Score:2)
SMB exists in the corpoare environment only so this is a non issue outside the office.
Say what? I was under the impression that file sharing between PCs running Windows on the same LAN used the SMB protocol.
Windows Servers are serving business clients.
Not always. There used to be Windows Home Server [wikipedia.org].
gmail, dropbox (Score:2)
If you've got a small enough organization, you can probably get by with gmail tied to your domain and either dropbox or serverless CIFS for sharing files.
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This should be an easy battle. Make sure he can only use linux on his workstation : )
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Give him a breakdown of licensing and support costs for the next 5 years. Windows Server gets pretty expensive when you start adding the client acces licenses in for all of the different products.
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Have him explain, in technical terms, how what samba provides isn't real. If by it not being real he means "not AD-based", then well, samba 4 is the answer he's looking for. Learn samba4, port ldap data (if you use ldap), start it on a test server (rename the domain to something else!), log in from various versions of windows, test, then deploy and be done. I'll be doing it in the coming weeks: migrating from samba3+ldap to samba4. The dreaded old HP printers are my only nightmare, their print drivers are b
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I don't understand. Samba and Windows Server have practically identical features. You should be able to mount a Windows share the same way you mount a Samba share.
Re: What he really means... (Score:3)
Oh sure. The mail slot interface is an essential part of the protocol. That's why you just can't buy Samba based products anymore, all commercial NAS are re-badged versions of Windows server.
Sarcasm, in case anyone was wondering..
Jeremy
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Pretty much every Linux/Samba-based NAS on the market has the same policy limitations as a desktop Linux installation.
Plus, the mailslot interface is a very important part of the protocol. It's how networked users have been able to communicate with one another for quite a long time, without needing third-party software, which also provides an interface for applications to also do so across machines. The reason it was likely never fully implemented on Linux is because there is no reasonable way to implemen
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... Jabber?
You're making a problem out of nothing to make an (invalid) point.
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And you're attempting to downplay serious lacks of policy and communication support in an attempt to disregard the point.
The fact that businesses use what they use proves my point.
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Hmm, please ignore my post :). Reading some other comments I realize it is totally wrong...