There is admittedly a large number of Samba books on the market today and each book has its place. Despite the apparent plethora of books, Samba as a project continues to receive much criticism for failing to provide sufficient documentation. Samba is also criticized for being too complex and too difficult to configure. In many ways this is evidence of the success of Samba as there would be no complaints if it was not successful.
The Samba Team members work predominantly with UNIX and Linux, so it is hardly surprising that existing Samba documentation should reflect that orientation. The original HOWTO text documents were intended to provide some tips, a few golden nuggets, and if they helped anyone then that was just wonderful. But the HOWTO documents lacked structure and context. They were isolated snapshots of information that were written to pass information on to someone else who might benefit. They reflected a need to transmit more information that could be conveniently put into manual pages.
The original HOWTO documents were written by different authors. Most HOWTO documents are the result of feedback and contributions from numerous authors. In this book we took care to preserve as much original content as possible. As you read this book you will note that chapters were written by multiple authors, each of whom has his own style. This demonstrates the nature of the Open Source software development process.
The Official Samba 3.2.x HOWTO and Reference Guide (pdf)
The Samba Team members work predominantly with UNIX and Linux, so it is hardly surprising that existing Samba documentation should reflect that orientation. The original HOWTO text documents were intended to provide some tips, a few golden nuggets, and if they helped anyone then that was just wonderful. But the HOWTO documents lacked structure and context. They were isolated snapshots of information that were written to pass information on to someone else who might benefit. They reflected a need to transmit more information that could be conveniently put into manual pages.
The original HOWTO documents were written by different authors. Most HOWTO documents are the result of feedback and contributions from numerous authors. In this book we took care to preserve as much original content as possible. As you read this book you will note that chapters were written by multiple authors, each of whom has his own style. This demonstrates the nature of the Open Source software development process.
The Official Samba 3.2.x HOWTO and Reference Guide (pdf)
