In the last month or so despite not having much spare time I spent a few hours reading an interesting book: Implementing Samba 4 It actually is more than a simple book, it is a well written step-by-step guide on how to install (on Debian 7, not that it makes much difference, the installation is really similar on CentOS for example), configure, manage and even migrate an existing Active Directory domain controller from Windows Server to GNU/Linux. It consists of 9 chapters each one covering the most important features of Samba 4; everything explained in the book is also integrated with code snippets, scripts and command line examples. I am sure this book will come real handy in case I will have to setup a GNU/Linux based AD domain controller. …

With Samba being the clusterfuck it is, every time a new version is released you have to expect something to be messed up. This time they added a bunch of new features like MS Active Directory support, too bad that now the simple directory sharing is broken/not working like it did before. Something like 1 year ago I wrote a small guide about how to setup a Samba share on Centos 6 and I used the same smb.conf file on more than 10 machines without any problem since yesterday, when I tried it on my fresh installed Fedora 18 (which uses Samba 4.0.0). First of all, in the “Standalone Server Options” is reported that “security” options “share and server” are deprecated; too bad I just used “share” to save me the hassle of setting up a new user and stuff even if I would like the directory to be fully accessible by everyone without any restriction. I tried it anyway with “security = share” but there was no way to make the folder accessible, when trying to access the Samba share I always got a popup in which I had to login. So, at the end of the story, like it or not, I had to setup a new user, create a samba user and edit the “smb.conf” file. …