Practical Technology

“East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” is a line from Rudyard Kipling’s The Ballad of East and West. It could also apply to Windows and Linux. If you don’t know what you’re doing, getting the two to meet on the network can seem like it’s almost impossible. Fortunately, [...]

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Getting a little tired of one Windows SMB (Server Message Block) security problem after another? Want a reliable and fast file and print server without the Windows server headaches? Then, may I strongly recommend that you give Samba on Linux a try? Samba is an open-source program that had provided file and print services to [...]

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If you want to share files and printers over your network, chances are you use SMB (Server Message Block) either on Windows or Samba. Microsoft, which lost control of SMB a while back, decided a new protocol which could they own: SMB2. There’s only one little problem with it. It’s not nearly as secure as [...]

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SMB (Server Message Block) is the network protocol glue that binds together many file and print servers and clients for Windows and Linux, but it’s recently been running into some trouble. First, Microsoft’s proprietary take on it, SMB2, has real security problems. Next, Likewise has released a new open-source SMB/CIFS (Common Internet File System) file [...]

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I see my buddy in technology writing, Preston Gralla, is having trouble getting his new Wubi-based Ubuntu 8.04 system to work with his Windows file systems and vice-versa. While some Linuxes, like Xandros and SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) come Windows network ready, most, like Ubuntu, require some Samba work. Samba is an open-source program [...]

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