Managing SMB/CIFS Networks with net

Roderick Smith

Thursday, January 15th, 2004

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Samba 3.0 has been released — it’s the latest version of a server that’s becomes an essential part of Linux. Samba is primarily a server for the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol (also known as the Common Internet File System, or CIFS), the protocol used by Windows computers for file and printer sharing. Using Samba, Linux systems seamlessly integrate into existing Windows networks. Without Samba, Linux couldn’t serve as a “drop-in” replacement for Windows file and print servers.

Samba 3.0 provides many improvements over the earlier 2.2.Ix series, including the ability to join Microsoft Active Directory (AD) domains, support for multiple password database back-ends, the ability to function as a backup domain controller (BDC) to a Samba primary domain controller (PDC), better support for Windows NT/2000/XP printing, Unicode filename support, domain trust support, a command for performing network maintenance, and more. If you need any of these features, upgrading to Samba 3.0 is a no-brainer. Even if you don’t need these features, you’ll probably upgrade eventually during with your next Linux distro upgrade, as Samba 3.0 becomes standard with new distributions.

This column is devoted to the net command, one of the new Samba features. net helps you perform maintenance operations on SMB/CIFS networks. Its goal is to replace several other Samba commands, such as smbpasswd. Although Samba 3.0’s net command can’t yet do everything it might eventually do, it can handle many important duties. Learning about it is important for managing the new version of Samba,…

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