References

SMB Server

  • Source: Oracle Solaris Administration: SMB Server
  • Oracle 11 allows the Solaris server to be an active participant in a Windows active directory domain.
  • SMB server allows serving of files by means of SMB shares.
  • SMB server can operate in workgroup mode or domain mode:
    • Workgroup mode: SMB server responsible for authentication "local login".
    • Domain mode: User authentication delegated to the domain controller.
  • Solaris manages user identities using UIDs/GIDs and Windows SIDs through the idmap identity mapping service.
  • Note that Samba and SMB servers cannot be used simultaneously on a single Oracle Solaris system.

Difference between Samba and SMB?

CIFS and SMB are Windows file sharing protocols. CIFS being the latest version of SMB. NFS is traditionally a Unix file sharing protocol but now Windows Server supports it natively (the old version anyway--see below). SMB/CIFS uses Windows-style access control lists (which are really complicated) whereas NFS uses Unix-style file permissions (User ID owner, Group ID owner, and read/write/execute permissions). On Unix/Linux systems you can use Samba to both share and access filesystems via SMB/CIFS. Samba does a lot more than that though... It can actually act as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft's Active Directory. Linux has built-in support for CIFS shares now so Samba isn't needed in most cases.