Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 18:12:59 -0500 (CDT) From: Doug Lee <dgl@visi.com> To: Nathan Vidican <webmaster@wmptl.com> Cc: "SILVER, MICHAEL A" <MSILVER@scana.com>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Samba vs NT Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007281752130.22719-100000@kirk.dsl.visi.com> In-Reply-To: <397C9C1F.F9A2380D@wmptl.com>
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I administer a FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE server (soon to hop up to 4.1) which runs in a training center full of Win95/98 boxes. It serves as file server besides being firewall, NAT, DHCP, mail, and web server. A few comments: In my experience, using matching (though admittedly archaic) hardware, Win95 is faster at serving files than Samba 2.x. However, this is only a problem with pre-Pentium boxes as far as I can tell. For example, I tried viewing/playing a 13-megabyte, 15-second .avi file across the 10BaseT LAN using FreeBSD/Samba to serve the file, and it couldn't play without pauses; but serving it from a Win95 box (a 486; the FreeBSD server was a Cyrix 586) worked just fine. FreeBSD/Samba could serve the file at an adequate speed when running on a P90 though. If you ever use the DOS short file names like mydocu~1, resume~1.doc, etc., WATCH OUT! Samba creates its own short file names for use by programs/systems which can't handle the long names. The Samba names are not so predictable as the DOS/Windows names; you can't just pull them out of your hat. If you don't use short names or don't mind looking them up, this will not be a problem for you. Windows 98 wants to insist on encrypted passwords; Windows 95 does not (by default) require this. (I don't remember what Windows NT's various flavors prefer.) Samba can handle this mixture of expectations just fine as long as you follow the guidelines in the Samba documentation. In my case, this includes managing the special smbpasswd file so I can have Samba deal with encrypted passwords from the Win98 boxes. If you don't like that alternative, you can flip off encrypted passwords on boxes that would want them by modifying the registry as described in the Samba docs. I have no experience using Samba as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC), but I understand that support for this is largely if not entirely present by Samba 2.0.7 (and probably 2.0.6). The building I admin for uses share-level security at the moment. I have also not used Samba as a print server, though there is extensive support for this, including ways to have print jobs automatically converted among formats as they are being printed. You can even make your FreeBSD box a fax server which appears like a printer to Windows boxes--though that requires additional software such as mgetty+sendfax. All that said, why did I choose to use Samba instead of Windows (any version) to serve files? FreeBSD/Samba runs on *MUCH* less expensive hardware with no notable loss of performance, has never crashed without help from the power company :-), and runs right on the box already assigned to handle all Internet-related issues as I listed above. If you're willing to read a few docs, you should be able to make Samba do everything you need. -- Doug Lee dgl@visi.com http://www.visi.com/~dgl On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, Nathan Vidican wrote: > "SILVER, MICHAEL A" wrote: > > > > Is anyone using Samba in a corporate environment instead of NT, with 95/98 > > or NT workstations? Any luck? Any one convert from NT to Samba? Is there > > anything to watch out for? I have client who might benefit from a move to > > Samba from NT 3.51. > > > > ...Thanks... > > ...Michael... > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > I use it at home, and at work. I find SAMBA works quite well, Just a bit > of a pain setting up the login service(s). Once they're setup things are > fine, and STABLE (there's a word that doesn't go well with NT). To be > honest though, I've never used Samba under a heavy load driven > environment, (were a Novell Netware/NT Workstation/Win9X office here > with FreeBSD intranet/inter/web/email servers). > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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