If you need to share files or printers with Windows machines, you're likely using Samba and know how to administer and configure it by editing configuration files and starting and stopping the daemon. However, there's an easier, graphical way to configure your box: the Samba Web Administration Tool.

The Samba development team has just announced the release of Samba 4.0. Samba is a Free Softwareimplementation of SMB/CIFS protocols, which makes it possible for any system running Samba to function as a file, print and authentication server suite for Microsoft Windows and UNIX-like clients.

The Webmin administration tool is a very powerful suite of web-based admin tools (for the Linux operating system) that have been around for some time. Webmin includes numerous modules covering nearly every aspect of Linux administration.

Samba allows Linux, Windows, and Mac to communicate with one another, but it has a reputation for being tricky to configure and administer. Here are some ways to reduce Samba headaches.

Samba 3.4.3 is released. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that provides seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS.

Introduction to Samba Verify installed version To see the version of samba

The intent of this article is to show you how to configure your Linux machine and Samba server to participate in a Windows 2003 Active Directory domain as a Member Server using Kerberos authentication. This involves using the security = ADS security mode in Samba.

Every few months the Samba developers have started releasing a status and direction report called "The Samba Team Blog".

Samba 4, currently the alpha development of Active Directory for Linux and Unix, has been in parallel development with Samba 3. Allison says "The ultimate goal for Samba 4 will be to merge with the Samba 3 file server code, something that is called "Frankie" internally, after Frankenstein, the merging of the body parts...