Seems like the answer to a lot of Samba problems are to toggle streams on or off according to what kind of problems are being encountered. So I thought I’d do a couple of quick .command files that can be sent to clients to do it. This way, they can be sent to users having problems to test enabling or disabling the option. Click to download
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SMB, Extended Attributes & Xsan
Xsan 2.2 is having a bit of a problem with serving up files with Extended Attributes over SMB volumes that are stored on an Xsan according to a recent knowledge base article. The fix (other than not using files with Extended Attributes on Xsan volumes that are shared up over SMB is to enable stream support in the /etc/smb.conf file. To do so, open /etc/smb.conf and then change the stream support = yes setting to stream support = no. This isn’t to say that all of your problems will magically vanish, but it should help to provide some relief until the next update.
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Setting up DFS in Windows Server 2008
The first task that you will complete setting up any WIndows Server 2008 is to set up a Server Role. To do so, open Server Manager and click on Add Roles. At the Add Roles Wizard, click on the Next button to show a list of roles to add. Check the box for File Services and click on the Next button. Click on Next again. At the Select Role Services screen, you’ll see that File Server is checked. This will install the SMB/CIFS services. You’ll also see Distributed File System. Check the box for Distributed File System and the then check the boxes for DFS Namespaces if you want to…
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How to Get Hax0r'd
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Xsan: Small Files & AFP
Xsan can be used as the back end storage to provide front end network file share services for a Mac OS X environment. This isn’t to say that it will work like a charm without some fine tuning though. One of the most important tools you have in performance tuning any Xsan volume is the block size. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the stripe breadth multiplied by the block size should total out to about 1MB total. The stripe breadth on the storage pools is therefore going to need to be customized any time you change the block sizes for the volume. If you are using Xsan as a…
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Disable and Remove .DS_Store Files
In a number of environments, where SMB, AFP and other file sharing protocols are used with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux clients, there are a number of hidden files that Mac OS X leaves behind. For anyone who has managed an environment like this you’re likely to notice the .DS_Store files and potentially even have tried taking measures to get rid of them. However, try as you might they’re likely to have come back repeatedly. But you don’t have to live with them. You can tell your Windows clients not to show hidden files. From Windows XP, open an explorer.exe window (Windows Explorer, also accessible by browsing any folder…
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Samba 4: A Poor Mans Active Directory
Today I pulled down the Samba 4 binaries and installed it using the instructions the developers are slowly building on the Samba 4 wiki. Overall it was a fairly painless experience, although I do believe I have a couple of bug reports to file (not surprising considering it is not out yet). Overall I found the process to be far easier than it has been in the past. The Samba team seems to realize that in order for Samba 4 to compete with Active Directory that it needs to integrate really well in the *nix server ecosystem. For example, like Active Directory you can choose to have Samba integrate into…
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Mac OS X Server: Cached Logon and Windows PDC Clients
When using Mac OS X Server as a PDC you may find that you need to tell a Windows system to cache login (aka logon) information for longer than the Windows system allows by default. In an Active Directory environment it is fairly straight forward to deploy this type of setting through a GPO; however, the policy settings for an NT4 style PDC environment (aka – via SMB) won’t necessarily allow you to perform this task. To do so you might need to fire up the registry (or script an event in the login script to do so) and edit the following key with a Value (in terms of login…
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WAN Acceleration Magic Quadrant
WAN Acceleration has been a hot topic for some time. But over the past couple of years the cost of acceleration technology has dropped drastically due to its emergence as a full-blown market. Riverbed has jumped to the top of the leaders circle for a number of reasons, with Juniper, Blue Coat, Cisco, Packeteer, etc in its wake. For the most part, all WAN accelerators are going to have a few things in common. There are a pair of appliances, each with a disk that can cache files going between two points. To some degree, the purchase of accelerator appliances should be driven by the protocols to be used. For example, if you’re a…
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Mac OS X Server: Sharing Files from the Command Line
Mac OS X Server provides the sharing command. You can create, delete and augment information for share points using sharing. To create a share point for AFP you can use the following command: sharing -a <PATH> -A <NAME> So let’s say you have a directory at /Shares/Public and you want to create a share point called PUBLIC. You can use the following command: sharing -a /Shares/Public -A PUBLIC Now, the -a here will create the share for AFP but what if you want to create a share for other protocols? Well, -F does FTP and -S does SMB. Once created you can disable the share using the following command: sharing -r PUBLIC…