The following are some terms used in Samba documentation and in the
YaST module.
- SMB protocol
-
Samba uses the SMB (server message
block) protocol that is based on the
services. Due
to pressure from IBM, Microsoft released the protocol so other software
manufacturers could establish connections to a Microsoft domain network.
With Samba, the SMB protocol works on top of the
TCP/IP protocol, so the TCP/IP protocol must be installed on all clients.
- CIFS protocol
-
CIFS (common Internet file system) protocol is another protocol
supported by Samba.
CIFS defines a standard remote file system access protocol for use over
the network,
enabling groups of users to work together and share documents across the
network.
- NetBIOS
-
NetBIOS is a software interface (API) designed for communication
between machines. Here, a name service is provided. It enables machines
connected to the network to reserve names for themselves. After reservation,
these machines can be addressed by name. There is no central process that
checks names. Any machine on the network can reserve as many names as it
wants as long as the names are not already in use. The NetBIOS interface
can now
be implemented for different network architectures. An implementation that
works relatively closely with network hardware is called
, but this is often referred to as
. Network protocols implemented with
NetBIOS are IPX from Novell (NetBIOS
via TCP/IP) and TCP/IP.
The NetBIOS names sent via TCP/IP have nothing in common with the
names used in /etc/hosts or those defined by DNS.
NetBIOS uses its own, completely independent naming convention. However, it
is recommended to use names that correspond to DNS hostnames to make
administration easier. This is the default used by
Samba.
- Samba server
-
Samba server is a server that provides SMB/CIFS
services and NetBIOS over IP naming services to clients. For
Linux, there are two daemons for Samba server: smnd for
SMB/CIFS services and nmbd for naming services.
- Samba client
-
Samba client is a system that uses Samba
services from a Samba server over the SMB protocol. All common
operating systems, such as Mac OS X, Windows, and OS/2,
support the SMB protocol. The TCP/IP protocol must be
installed on all computers. Samba provides a client for
the different UNIX flavors. For Linux, there is a kernel
module for SMB that allows the integration of SMB
resources on the Linux system level. You do not need run any
daemon for Samba client.
- Shares
-
SMB servers provide hardware space to their clients by means of
shares. Shares are printers and directories with their
subdirectories on the server. It is exported by means of a
name and can be accessed by its name. The share name can be
set to any name—it does not have to be the name of the
export directory. A printer is also assigned a
name. Clients can access the printer by its name.
