Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive, thoughtful and honest
Review: After digesting The Official SAMBA-3 HOWTO and Resource Guide, I was aching for some actual examples (as TOSHARG is almost void of them). This book delivers!It's difficult to express how impressed I am by Terpstra's book. It addresses the complete spectrum of Samba deployments, from the 10-person office to the 2000-seat multi-site enterprise. You assume the role of the "IT guy" in several example situations that seem quite non-hypothetical (read "some poor sap was in these very shoes") while Terpstra explains not just what to do, but how to do it and - most importantly - WHY. One of the nicest things about this book is that each situation is followed by a "Q&A" section - almost like a textbook - that addresses both the important points of the exercise, as well as some of the trivial details that were left out for the sake of brevity. Don't be tempted to skip them thinking that it's just a review. Definetly a "must-have" if you're looking to use Samba for anything more than a simple file share. You'll find tips, tricks, ancient wisdom and honest admissions of bugs (and their workarounds) that will keep you from losing your sanity.
Rating:
Summary: No fluff, all examples, Samba 3 features to the max
Review: First off, I was a contributing author on Samba Unleashed. Samba Unleashed is now over 4 years old, written for Samba 2.x. I have been loosely following Samba 3, largely implementing Samba 2.2 with NIS and pGINA. Although I am very familiar with Kerberos, I have not tackled Samba 3 with it yet, let alone LDAP. So I was looking for a good update on Samba 3. This book starts out slow, but it's "no fluff" -- rim with examples and specifics on what you want to use. Nothing to fancy in the beginning, but just enough for the newbie -- although they'll still need to be somewhat Linux experienced. Chapter 1 was a nice touch with sniffing and explanations for the seasoned network admin, although could be a bit of overkill for the newbie. The book quickly shifts into higher gears on Samba 3's capabilities in latter chapters, a testament to its focus on the latest'n greatest. The LDAP and Kerberos information is accurate and to-the-point. It "cuts through the bull" and gets to the specifics -- especially on some of the FUD out there surrounding Samba (when the reality is some so-called "weaknesses" are not Samba, but CIFS/SMB itself). Definitely a book for those that want to "just get running now," from Samba newbie to seasoned author. ;-ppp
Rating:
Summary: No fluff, all examples, Samba 3 features to the max
Review: First off, I was a contributing author on Samba Unleashed. Samba Unleashed is now over 4 years old, written for Samba 2.x. I have been loosely following Samba 3, largely implementing Samba 2.2 with NIS and pGINA. Although I am very familiar with Kerberos, I have not tackled Samba 3 with it yet, let alone LDAP. So I was looking for a good update on Samba 3. This book starts out slow, but it's "no fluff" -- rim with examples and specifics on what you want to use. Nothing to fancy in the beginning, but just enough for the newbie -- although they'll still need to be somewhat Linux experienced. Chapter 1 was a nice touch with sniffing and explanations for the seasoned network admin, although could be a bit of overkill for the newbie. The book quickly shifts into higher gears on Samba 3's capabilities in latter chapters, a testament to its focus on the latest'n greatest. The LDAP and Kerberos information is accurate and to-the-point. It "cuts through the bull" and gets to the specifics -- especially on some of the FUD out there surrounding Samba (when the reality is some so-called "weaknesses" are not Samba, but CIFS/SMB itself). Definitely a book for those that want to "just get running now," from Samba newbie to seasoned author. ;-ppp
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on Samba
Review: I've read a number of books on Samba starting with one written in 1998 by John Blair. Samba books are commonly written as references, borrowing heavily from other books and man pages. They are also often written from a developer's point of view. "Samba-3 by Example" is different: it is written from a system administrator's point of view. You the reader become the sysadmin of a growing company, and learn how to grow your Samba solution with the company. Each chapter has an "Implementation" section with good hands-on examples. Also, this book gets in to more advanced topics such as integrating Kerberos security into Samba, the black art of migrating data from Windows servers to Linux/UNIX servers running Samba, and the new "passdb backend" smb.conf parameter. Finally, it addresses Samba-3 which is now standard with most Linux distributions as pre-built RPMs. I would definitely recommend this book if you are going to buy a book on Samba.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on Samba
Review: I've read a number of books on Samba starting with one written in 1998 by John Blair. Samba books are commonly written as references, borrowing heavily from other books and man pages. They are also often written from a developer's point of view. "Samba-3 by Example" is different: it is written from a system administrator's point of view. You the reader become the sysadmin of a growing company, and learn how to grow your Samba solution with the company. Each chapter has an "Implementation" section with good hands-on examples. Also, this book gets in to more advanced topics such as integrating Kerberos security into Samba, the black art of migrating data from Windows servers to Linux/UNIX servers running Samba, and the new "passdb backend" smb.conf parameter. Finally, it addresses Samba-3 which is now standard with most Linux distributions as pre-built RPMs. I would definitely recommend this book if you are going to buy a book on Samba.
Rating:
Summary: go from nearly impossible to nearly easy
Review: If someone is paying you to make their Windows and Linux machines play nice with each other, this book will make it easy enough that you may feel guilty for taking their money. This book has almost every keystroke you need to type to get a Samba system doing what you need it to do. As someone who frequently gets frustrated trying to make useful configuration files by reading the documentation I appreciate the fact that every scenario he describes in the book comes with a complete set of configuration files which implement the scenario. Even if your situation isn't covered exactly in the book you will find that the examples here a great starting point that you can modify to do what you want. For example, using this book (and the online references it mentions) in an afternoon I was able to go from a new RedHat 9 machine with no Samba or LDAP installed to a system which was a member of a Win2k3 Active Directory domain, allowed local login using Windows AD credentials and kerberos, used full Windows ACLs for the domain user files on the Linux machine, and unified the Windows SID->Linux UID/GID mapping by installing an LDAP backend to store the ID mapping for consistent numbering across multiple Linux machines. There were some quirks along the way, like setting up the LDAP schemas and initializing the database, and compiling ACL support into the kernel (RedHat 9 doesn't include it by default), but in each case the book pointed to an online resource where the tools could be downloaded. Very cool to go from (from my point of view) nearly impossible to nearly easy in just one book.
Rating:
Summary: Real world scenarios - that work
Review: John Terpstra had done a great job showing how SAMBA can be used in real world scenarios. The scenarios are representative of both the environments and customer needs that I have had to address as a consultant. More importantly, it was great to read a book from the Open Source community that was not a diatribe against Microsoft, but rather focused on how one gets Windows and UNIX/Linux working seamlessly in a heterogeneous environment. The open and honest discussion around interoperability with Windows versus replacing Windows is quite informative. The book did not contain hyperbolic discussions around the technical or ethical benefits of Open Source. This is a book that I would recommend to friends from either the Windows world or FLOSS space (Free/Libre/Open Source Software). Chapter 10, "Active Directory, Kerberos, and Security," was especially helpful and informative. I particularly appreciated the examples showing both the UNIX and Windows approaches to various problems. The thorough drilldown on the technical underpinnings and explanation of the historical issues gives a good perspective. This chapter helped me understand SAMBA coexistence/interoperability in Active Directory based environments. Having details on security, performance, locking, and the real world conundrums that arise made it possible to translate the books scenarios to my specific needs. The book is easy to read and clearly details the steps required when setting up your SAMBA environment. The book includes some great references, and lots of accurate, step by step guidance. Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone trying to set up and use SAMBA.
Rating:
Summary: Real world scenarios - that work
Review: John Terpstra had done a great job showing how SAMBA can be used in real world scenarios. The scenarios are representative of both the environments and customer needs that I have had to address as a consultant. More importantly, it was great to read a book from the Open Source community that was not a diatribe against Microsoft, but rather focused on how one gets Windows and UNIX/Linux working seamlessly in a heterogeneous environment. The open and honest discussion around interoperability with Windows versus replacing Windows is quite informative. The book did not contain hyperbolic discussions around the technical or ethical benefits of Open Source. This is a book that I would recommend to friends from either the Windows world or FLOSS space (Free/Libre/Open Source Software). Chapter 10, "Active Directory, Kerberos, and Security," was especially helpful and informative. I particularly appreciated the examples showing both the UNIX and Windows approaches to various problems. The thorough drilldown on the technical underpinnings and explanation of the historical issues gives a good perspective. This chapter helped me understand SAMBA coexistence/interoperability in Active Directory based environments. Having details on security, performance, locking, and the real world conundrums that arise made it possible to translate the books scenarios to my specific needs. The book is easy to read and clearly details the steps required when setting up your SAMBA environment. The book includes some great references, and lots of accurate, step by step guidance. Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone trying to set up and use SAMBA.
Rating: 
Summary: Some useful examples, but limited in focus.
Review: The author of this book is a myopic Nix evangelist.
In the real world there are many reasons for Nix and Windows to Co-exist in a variety of relationships. There is also strong argument that Microsoft's semi-propriety file sharing protocol is better than NFS, regardless of one's feelings on that argument Windows supports the MS protocol and only recently can you download support for NFS without paying additional licensing fees to MS or a third party vendor, and this free support for NFS is only for WinXP and 2000/2003 Server. In any multiplatform environment the protocol of choice is going to be the MS protocol, and the way Nix implements it is through SAMBA and the heroic reverse engineering efforts of the SAMBA team. The reality of SAMBA is that it is a reverse engineered product with a very limited budget. For those of us coming from the MS side, SAMBA is a bear to administer. My dominant view of reality is different from the author -- the author presumes Nix on the Server Side and Windows on the Desktop, with any Microsoft Servers as an unwanted nuisance. My view is of either very mixed environments (which may also have a strong Mac presence) or of Windows dominated environments where Nix makes its entrance because of either being better suited to some specific task or allowing some significant licensing fees to be avoided. The choice and structure of the examples was pretty much chosen in light of the author's bias and lacked the full depth that could have been reached by also working examples from a Windows centric view. An issue that I have found inadequately addressed all around is that in Server 2003 Microsoft introduced new "security features" which pretty much break interoperability with SAMBA. One of the important goals of Samba 3 was to fix what Microsoft broke, the author gave only one useful example of making Samba 3 work with Server 2003. The author omitted how to disable those features which make interoperability with Samba difficult. And there are many reasons to choose having an easier time making things work over the enhanced security provided by the new features, if only as a temporary measure to reach a point where things work while resolving the issues that prevent it from working in the more secure configuration.
Rating:
Summary: Practical easy-to-use guide to samba-3
Review: The author provides a good step-by-step procedure for integrating Windows XP/ME based hosts to SAMBA-3. The sections on LDAP are thorough and so is the useful information on integrating windows NT domains to SAMBA-3. I'd definitely recommend this book to NT sys admins and those with an interest in implementing SAMBA-3.
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