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Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:36:04 +0800
From: Jason Fu <tsfu AT graduate DOT hku DOT hk>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Samba for Cygwin
Message-ID: <3FC2E980@webmaila.hku.hk>
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I've found this piece of old message when I tried to sort anything about 
CYGWIN port of Samba.

>
> Joshua Jensen wrote:
>
>> I show all my students Cygwin, and they love it.  Their number one
>> question, though, is "where is Samba for Cygwin?".  Are there aspects
>> of Samba that are particularly problematic when porting to Cygwin?
>> Are there any plans for Samba on Cygwin?
>

Samba does not just allow file sharing from UNIX/Linux box but it also acts as 
a domain controller for Windows box for network access. I do think that Samba 
for CYGWIN is worth it since it could simply allow 
Windows95/98/98SE/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3 to be the domain controller for other 
Windows workstation to control network access.

>
> Umm...why?
>
> Samba allows linux/unix machines to export shares using the SMB/CIFS
> protocol.
>
> smbfs allows linux machines to mount shares from other machines (incl.
> windows) using SMB/CIFS.
>
> Windows ALREADY can export and mount shares using SMB/CIFS.  These
> filesharing tools are *builtin* to windows 9x/Me and NT/2k.  Why run
> samba?
>
> That's like asking to port WINE to Cygwin (or port cygwin to WINE).

We don't need WINE for CYGWIN since CYGWIN is already on Windows platform. But 
we need Samba on Windows for working as a domain controller to control network 
access from various workstation. For marketing purpose, not all versions in NT 
family are allowed to be domain controller.

> It's a gee-whiz proof-of-concept, but has no practical value.
>
> --Chuck
>
>
> --

Samba for CYGWIN does have practical value; you buy Windows XP/2K for at most 
US$300 but you buy for Windows Server NT4.0/2K/2K3 for at least US$3,000 and 
only servers are allowed to be "promoted" to be domain controllers. With Samba 
for CYGWIN, we may no longer need server version Windows, do we? Although the 
I/O is not so good on Windows box as compared with Linux box, it still makes 
sense that CYGWIN is able to do all Linux can do.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.


Cheers,

Jason

PS This is a very old message dated back to 2001 but I still think it's worth 
it to bring up this issue for all of your concern.

http://www.hkucs.org:8080/~tsfu/


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