Chapter 1. Learning the Samba (original) (raw)
Sharing a Disk Service
If everything is properly configured, we should be able to see the Samba server,toltec, through the Network Neighborhood of themaya Windows desktop. In fact, Figure 1-2 shows the Network Neighborhood of themaya computer, including toltecand each computer that resides in the METRAN workgroup. Note the Entire Network icon at the top of the list. As we just mentioned, more than one workgroup can be on an SMB network at any given time. If a user clicks the Entire Network icon, she will see a list of all the workgroups that currently exist on the network.
Figure 1-2. The Network Neighborhood directory
We can take a closer look at the toltec server by double-clicking its icon. This contacts toltecitself and requests a list of its_shares_—the file and printer resources—that the computer provides. In this case, a printer named lp, a home directory namedjay, and a disk share namedspirit are on the server, as shown in Figure 1-3. Note that the Windows display shows hostnames in mixed case (Toltec). Case is irrelevant in hostnames, so you might see toltec, Toltec, and TOLTEC in various displays or command output, but they all refer to a single system. Thanks to Samba, Windows 98 sees the Unix server as a valid SMB server and can access thespirit folder as if it were just another system folder.
Figure 1-3. Shares available on the Toltec server as viewed from maya
One popular Windows feature is the ability to map a drive letter (such as E:, F:, or Z:) to a shared directory on the network using the Map Network Drive option in Windows Explorer.[1]Once you do so, your applications can access the folder across the network using the drive letter. You can store data on it, install and run programs from it, and even password-protect it against unwanted visitors. See Figure 1-4 for an example of mapping a drive letter to a network directory.
Figure 1-4. Mapping a network drive to a Windows drive letter
Take a look at the Path: entry in the dialog box of Figure 1-4. An equivalent way to represent a directory on a network computer is by using two backslashes, followed by the name of the networked computer, another backslash, and the networked directory of the computer, as shown here:
\network-computer_directory_
This is known as the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) in the Windows world. For example, the dialog box in Figure 1-4 represents the network directory on the toltec server as:
\toltec\spirit
If this looks somewhat familiar to you, you're probably thinking of uniform resource locators (URLs), which are addresses that web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer use to resolve systems across the Internet. Be sure not to confuse the two: URLs such as http://www.oreilly.com use forward slashes instead of backslashes, and they precede the initial slashes with the data transfer protocol (i.e., ftp, http) and a colon (:). In reality, URLs and UNCs are two completely separate things, although sometimes you can specify an SMB share using a URL rather than a UNC. As a URL, the \\toltec\spirit share would be specified as_smb://toltec/spirit_.
Once the network drive is set up, Windows and its programs behave as if the networked directory were a local disk. If you have any applications that support multiuser functionality on a network, you can install those programs on the network drive.[2] Figure 1-5 shows the resulting network drive as it would appear with other storage devices in the Windows 98 client. Note the pipeline attachment in the icon for the J: drive; this indicates that it is a network drive rather than a fixed drive.
Figure 1-5. The Network directory mapped to the client drive letter J
My Network Places, found in Windows Me, 2000, and XP, works differently from Network Neighborhood. It is necessary to click a few more icons, but eventually we can get to the view of thetoltec server as shown in Figure 1-6. This is from a Windows 2000 system. Setting up the network drive using the Map Network Drive option in Windows 2000 works similarly to other Windows versions.
