The Samba suite is available at the samba website.
It is not recommended that you run a version of Samba with the word "alpha" in its name unless you know what you are doing and are willing to do some debugging. Many, many people just get the latest recommended stable release version and are happy. If you are brave, by all means take the plunge and help with the testing and development - but don't install it on your departmental server. Samba is typically very stable and safe, and this is mostly due to the policy of many public releases.
How the scheme works:
| When major changes are made the version number is increased. For example, the transition from 1.9.15 to 1.9.16. However, this version number will not appear immediately and people should continue to use 1.9.15 for production systems (see next point.) |
| Just after major changes are made the software is considered unstable, and a series of alpha releases are distributed, for example 1.9.16alpha1. These are for testing by those who know what they are doing. The "alpha" in the filename will hopefully scare off those who are just looking for the latest version to install. |
| When Andrew thinks that the alphas have stabilised to the point where he would recommend new users install it, he renames it to the same version number without the alpha, for example 1.9.16. |
| Inevitably bugs are found in the "stable" releases and minor patch levels are released which give us the pXX series, for example 1.9.16p2. |
So the progression goes:
1.9.15p7 (production) 1.9.15p8 (production) 1.9.16alpha1 (test sites only) : 1.9.16alpha20 (test sites only) 1.9.16 (production) 1.9.16p1 (production)
The above system means that whenever someone looks at the samba ftp site they will be able to grab the highest numbered release without an alpha in the name and be sure of getting the current recommended version.
Many different platforms have run Samba successfully. The platforms most widely used and thus best tested are Linux and SunOS.
At time of writing, there is support (or has been support for in earlier versions):
| A/UX 3.0 |
| AIX |
| Altos Series 386/1000 |
| Amiga |
| Apollo Domain/OS sr10.3 |
| BSDI |
| B.O.S. (Bull Operating System) |
| Cray, Unicos 8.0 |
| Convex |
| DGUX. |
| DNIX. |
| FreeBSD |
| HP-UX |
| Intergraph. |
| Linux with/without shadow passwords and quota |
| LYNX 2.3.0 |
| MachTen (a unix like system for Macintoshes) |
| Motorola 88xxx/9xx range of machines |
| NetBSD |
| NEXTSTEP Release 2.X, 3.0 and greater (including OPENSTEP for Mach). |
| OS/2 using EMX 0.9b |
| OSF1 |
| QNX 4.22 |
| RiscIX. |
| RISCOs 5.0B |
| SEQUENT. |
| SCO (including: 3.2v2, European dist., OpenServer 5) |
| SGI. |
| SMP_DC.OSx v1.1-94c079 on Pyramid S series |
| SONY NEWS, NEWS-OS (4.2.x and 6.1.x) |
| SUNOS 4 |
| SUNOS 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 (Solaris 2.2, 2.3, and '2.4 and later') |
| Sunsoft ISC SVR3V4 |
| SVR4 |
| System V with some berkely extensions (Motorola 88k R32V3.2). |
| ULTRIX. |
| UNIXWARE |
| UXP/DS |
Those who have registered in the Samba survey as "Pizza Factory" will already know this, but the rest may need some help. Andrew doesn't ask for payment, but he does appreciate it when people give him pizza. This calls for a little organisation when the pizza donor is twenty thousand kilometres away, but it has been done.
Method 1: Ring up your local branch of an international pizza chain and see if they honour their vouchers internationally. Pizza Hut do, which is how the entire Canberra Linux Users Group got to eat pizza one night, courtesy of someone in the US.
Method 2: Ring up a local pizza shop in Canberra and quote a credit card number for a certain amount, and tell them that Andrew will be collecting it (don't forget to tell him.) One kind soul from Germany did this.
Method 3: Purchase a pizza voucher from your local pizza shop that has no international affiliations and send it to Andrew. It is completely useless but he can hang it on the wall next to the one he already has from Germany :-)
Method 4: Air freight him a pizza with your favourite regional flavours. It will probably get stuck in customs or torn apart by hungry sniffer dogs but it will have been a noble gesture.