By: Robert Eckstein, David Collier-Brown, and Peter Kelly

Using Samba is written by Robert Eckstein, David Collier-Brown, and
Peter Kelly. It is available from O'Reilly Books: 1st Edition November
1999 1-56592-449-5, 413 pages, $34.95

O'Reilly does it again. We took a neophyte Unix SysAdmin, Using Samba,
and a great open source package called Samba and wala! We were sharing
Unix directories on our NT Network in no time at all. This is a GREAT book
for someone who needs a crasher in getting Samba installed and set up.
Of course the folks at samba.org make life pretty easy by having everything
packaged up and ready to install and by adding a tool called 'SWAT', which
is short for the 'Samba Web Administration Tool'. This enables any web
browser, local or remote, to handle the administration of the smb.conf file.

The book is structured in a logical sequence and really presents the
information in a concise manner. Chapter 1 had a great summary of the
Server Message Block protocol (SMB) and gave an explaination of Microsoft
Networks and some history of the Samba Project.

Unless you are really brave, you probably don't need most of Chapter 2.
The book spends a bit of time outlining how to rebuild Samba for your
particular platform. Good stuff indeed, but most people will just wait
until the binaries are available. Needless to say, we didn't test their
directions for compiling the source. The book also gives quite a bit
of coverage to configuring Microsoft Network clients, assuming in
the process the reader has little networking knowledge. Advanced
users may find this a bit overkill.

Later chapters give much better information for advanced users.
Items such as troubleshooting the install, directory permissions,
accounts, security and how to configure a print server on Samba
are all included.

Typical O'Reilly, this book reads easy and delivers essential information
upfront, followed by information for advanced users in later chapters
and great technical reference information in the appendicies.

A MUST HAVE for beginners. Advanced users should really put this on on
their holiday shopping list if they are managing a Samba install on Unix or
Linux.

Thumbs Up to O'Reilly for this one. If you think you need this book,
get it from Amazon.com right here.

Tom Anderson
Razer Technology Designs
Comments: tanderson@razertech.com