This is the SMB HOWTO. This document describes how to use the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, also called the Session Message Block, NetBIOS or LanManager protocol, with Linux. Although this document is Linux-centric, Samba runs on most Unix-like operating systems.
This document is maintained by David Wood ( dwood@plugged.net.au). Additions, modifications or corrections may be mailed there for inclusion in the next release.
Much more Samba documentation is available at the Samba Web site, located at http://www.samba.org/. You also might try the comp.protocols.smb newsgroup.
The SMB protocol is used by Microsoft Windows 3.11, NT and 95/98 to share disks and printers. Using the Samba suite of tools by Andrew Tridgell ( Andrew.Tridgell@anu.edu.au), UNIX (including Linux) machines can share disk and printers with Windows hosts. The smbfs tools by Paal-Kr. Engstad ( pke@engstad.ingok.hitos.no) and Volker Lendecke ( lendecke@namu01.gwdg.de) enable Unix machines to mount SMB shares from Windows or Samba hosts.
There are four things that one can do with Samba:
All of these are covered in this document.
Disclaimer: The procedures and scripts either work for the author or have been reported to work by the people that provided them. Different configurations may not work with the information given here. If you encounter such a situation, you may e-mail the author with suggestions for improvement in this document, but the author guarantees nothing. What did you expect? The author is, after all, a consultant...
Please note that for Windows 3.x machines to access SMB shares, they must have a TCP/IP stack and the Win32s DLLs. Both of these are available on Microsoft's Web site ( http://www.microsoft.com).