What is Samba and What is the use of Samba

What is Samba

Simply put, Samba stands as an open source software suite, which is used for seamless file and print services geared towards SMB/CIFS clients. It helps in interoperability between Linux/Unix servers and Windows-based clients, which is becoming quite common now-a-days among the users who want dual or multiple operating systems on their machines.

Image Courtsey Samba.org

For a general user of computers, Samba is a package that allows the operator to work on network that can include varied and multiple operating systems like Windows and Linux. Network administrators find it extensively easy to establish connections between different operating systems.

The interoperability of Windows and Unix is maintained through a protocol known as the “Common Internet File System”, or CIFS. Samba is an open source CIFS implementation and is available on www.samba.org.

What is the use of Samba

There are two key programs that are important to Samba: smbd and nmbd. These programs are instrumental in achieving the 4 basic modern-day CIFS services:

1. File & print services

2. Authentication and Authorization

3. Name resolution

4. Service announcement

Apart from these basic functions, there are many utilities where Samba plays its role, like Samba allows a Unix system to connect to a remote SMB share, transfer files, and send files to remote printers; and Samba allows to find names on a network, lookup their IP addresses, and query a remote machine for the list of names the machine believes it owns.

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