| 1 | Contributor: Andrew Tridgell and the Samba Team
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| 2 | Date: June 27, 1997
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| 3 | Satus: Always out of date! (Would not be the same without it!)
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| 4 |
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| 5 | Subject: A bit of history and a bit of fun
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| 6 | ============================================================================
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| 7 |
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| 8 | This is a short history of this project. It's not supposed to be
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| 9 | comprehensive, just enough so that new users can get a feel for where
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| 10 | this project has come from and maybe where it's going to.
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| 11 |
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| 12 | The whole thing really started in December 1991. I was (and still am)
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| 13 | a PhD student in the Computer Sciences Laboratory at the Australian
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| 14 | National University, in Canberra, Australia. We had just got a
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| 15 | beta copy of eXcursion from Digital, and I was testing it on my PC. At
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| 16 | this stage I was a MS-DOS user, dabbling in windows.
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| 17 |
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| 18 | eXcursion ran (at the time) only with Dec's `Pathworks' network for
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| 19 | DOS. I had up till then been using PC-NFS to connect to our local sun
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| 20 | workstations, and was reasonably happy with it. In order to run
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| 21 | pathworks I had to stop using PC-NFS and try using pathworks to mount
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| 22 | disk space. Unfortunately pathworks was only available for digital
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| 23 | workstations running VMS or Ultrix so I couldn't mount from the suns
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| 24 | anymore.
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| 25 |
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| 26 | I had access to a a decstation 3100 running Ultrix that I used to
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| 27 | administer, and I got the crazy notion that the protocol that
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| 28 | pathworks used to talk to ultrix couldn't be that hard, and maybe I
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| 29 | could work it out. I had never written a network program before, and
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| 30 | certainly didn't know what a socket was.
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| 31 |
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| 32 | In a few days, after looking at some example code for sockets, I
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| 33 | discovered it was pretty easy to write a program to "spy" on the file
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| 34 | sharing protocol. I wrote and installed this program (the sockspy.c
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| 35 | program supplied with this package) and captured everything that the
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| 36 | pathworks client said to the pathworks server.
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| 37 |
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| 38 | I then tried writing short C programs (using Turbo C under DOS) to do
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| 39 | simple file operations on the network drive (open, read, cd etc) and
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| 40 | looked at the packets that the server and client exchanged. From this
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| 41 | I worked out what some of the bytes in the packets meant, and started
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| 42 | to write my own program to do the same thing on a sun.
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| 43 |
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| 44 | After a day or so more I had my first successes and actually managed
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| 45 | to get a connection and to read a file. From there it was all
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| 46 | downhill, and a week later I was happily (if a little unreliably)
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| 47 | mounting disk space from a sun to my PC running pathworks. The server
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| 48 | code had a lot of `magic' values in it, which seemed to be always
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| 49 | present with the ultrix server. It was not till 2 years later that I
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| 50 | found out what all these values meant.
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| 51 |
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| 52 | Anyway, I thought other people might be interested in what I had done,
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| 53 | so I asked a few people at uni, and noone seemed much interested. I
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| 54 | also spoke to a person at Digital in Canberra (the person who had
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| 55 | organised a beta test of eXcursion) and asked if I could distribute
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| 56 | what I'd done, or was it illegal. It was then that I first heard the
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| 57 | word "netbios" when he told me that he thought it was all covered by a
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| 58 | spec of some sort (the netbios spec) and thus what I'd done was not
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| 59 | only legal, but silly.
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| 60 |
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| 61 | I found the netbios spec after asking around a bit (the RFC1001 and
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| 62 | RFC1002 specs) and found they looked nothing like what I'd written, so
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| 63 | I thought maybe the Digital person was mistaken. I didn't realise RFCs
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| 64 | referred to the name negotiation and packet encapsulation over TCP/IP,
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| 65 | and what I'd written was really a SMB implementation.
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| 66 |
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| 67 | Anyway, he encouraged me to release it so I put out "Server 0.1" in
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| 68 | January 1992. I got quite a good response from people wanting to use
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| 69 | pathworks with non-digital unix workstations, and I soon fixed a few
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| 70 | bugs, and released "Server 0.5" closely followed by "Server 1.0". All
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| 71 | three releases came out within about a month of each other.
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| 72 |
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| 73 | At this point I got an X Terminal on my desk, and I no longer needed eXcursion
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| 74 | and I prompty forgot about the whole project, apart from a few people
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| 75 | who e-mailed me occasionally about it.
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| 76 |
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| 77 | Nearly two years then passed with just occasional e-mails asking about
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| 78 | new versions and bugs. I even added a note to the ftp site asking for
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| 79 | a volunteer to take over the code as I no longer used it. No one
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| 80 | volunteered.
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| 81 |
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| 82 | During this time I did hear from a couple of people who said it should
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| 83 | be possible to use my code with Lanmanager, but I never got any
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| 84 | definite confirmation.
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| 85 |
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| 86 | One e-mail I got about the code did, however, make an impression. It
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| 87 | was from Dan Shearer at the university of South Australia, and he said
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| 88 | this:
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| 89 |
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| 90 |
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| 91 | I heard a hint about a free Pathworks server for Unix in the
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| 92 | Net channel of the Linux list. After quite a bit of chasing
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| 93 | (and lots of interested followups from other Linux people) I
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| 94 | got hold of a release news article from you, posted in Jan 92,
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| 95 | from someone in the UK.
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| 96 |
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| 97 | Can you tell me what the latest status is? I think you might
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| 98 | suddenly find a whole lot of interested hackers in the Linux
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| 99 | world at least, which is a place where things tend to happen
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| 100 | fast (and even some reliable code gets written, BION!)
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| 101 |
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| 102 | I asked him what Linux was, and he told me it was a free Unix for PCs.
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| 103 | This was in November 1992 and a few months later I was a Linux
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| 104 | convert! I still didn't need a pathworks server though, so I didn't do
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| 105 | the port, but I think Dan did.
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| 106 |
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| 107 | At about this time I got an e-mail from Digital, from a person working
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| 108 | on the Alpha software distribution. He asked if I would mind if they
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| 109 | included my server with the "contributed" cd-rom. This was a bit of a
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| 110 | shock to me as I never expected Dec to ask me if they could use my
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| 111 | code! I wrote back saying it was OK, but never heard from him again. I
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| 112 | don't know if it went on the cd-rom.
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| 113 |
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| 114 | Anyway, the next big event was in December 1993, when Dan again sent
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| 115 | me an e-mail saying my server had "raised its ugly head" on
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| 116 | comp.protocols.tcpip.ibmpc. I had a quick look on the group, and was
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| 117 | surprised to see that there were people interested in this thing.
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| 118 |
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| 119 | At this time a person from our computer center offered me a couple of
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| 120 | cheap ethernet cards (3c505s for $15 each) and coincidentially someone
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| 121 | announced on one of the Linux channels that he had written a 3c505
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| 122 | driver for Linux. I bought the cards, hacked the driver a little and
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| 123 | setup a home network between my wifes PC and my Linux box. I then
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| 124 | needed some way to connect the two, and I didn't own PC-NFS at home,
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| 125 | so I thought maybe my server could be useful. On the newsgroup among
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| 126 | the discussions of my server someone had mentioned that there was a
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| 127 | free client that might work with my server that Microsoft had put up
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| 128 | for ftp. I downloaded it and found to my surprise that it worked first
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| 129 | time with my `pathworks' server!
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| 130 |
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| 131 | Well, I then did a bit of hacking, asked around a bit and found (I
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| 132 | think from Dan) that the spec I needed was for the "SMB" protocol, and
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| 133 | that it was available via ftp. I grabbed it and started removing all
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| 134 | those ugly constants from the code, now that all was explained.
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| 135 |
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| 136 | On December 1st 1993 I announced the start of the "Netbios for Unix"
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| 137 | project, seeding the mailing list with all the people who had e-mailed
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| 138 | me over the years asking about the server.
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| 139 |
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| 140 | About 35 versions (and two months) later I wrote a short history of
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| 141 | the project, which you have just read. There are now over a hundred
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| 142 | people on the mailing list, and lots of people report that they use
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| 143 | the code and like it. In a few days I will be announcing the release
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| 144 | of version 1.6 to some of the more popular (and relevant) newsgroups.
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| 145 |
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| 146 |
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| 147 | Andrew Tridgell
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| 148 | 6th February 1994
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| 149 |
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| 150 | ---------------------
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| 151 |
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| 152 | It is now May 1995 and there are about 1400 people on the mailing
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| 153 | list. I got downloads from the main Samba ftp site from around 5000
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| 154 | unique hosts in a two month period. There are several mirror
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| 155 | sites as well. The current version number is 1.9.13.
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| 156 |
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| 157 | ---------------------
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| 158 |
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| 159 |
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| 160 | ---------------------
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| 161 | It's now March 1996 and version 1.9.16alpha1 has just been
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| 162 | released. There have been lots of changes recently with master browser
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| 163 | support and the ability to do domain logons etc. Samba has also been
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| 164 | ported to OS/2, the amiga and NetWare. There are now 3000 people on
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| 165 | the samba mailing list.
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| 166 | ---------------------
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| 167 |
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| 168 |
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| 169 | ---------------------
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| 170 | It's now June 1997 and samba-1.9.17 is due out soon. My how time passes!
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| 171 | Please refer to the WHATSNEW.txt for an update on new features. Just when
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| 172 | you think you understand what is happening the ground rules change - this
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| 173 | is a real world after all. Since the heady days of March 1996 there has
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| 174 | been a concerted effort within the SMB protocol using community to document
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| 175 | and standardize the protocols. The CIFS initiative has helped a long way
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| 176 | towards creating a better understood and more interoperable environment.
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| 177 | The Samba Team has grown in number and have been very active in the standards
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| 178 | formation and documentation process.
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| 179 |
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| 180 | The net effect has been that we have had to do a lot of work to bring Samba
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| 181 | into line with new features and capabilities in the SMB protocols.
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| 182 |
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| 183 | The past year has been a productive one with the following releases:
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| 184 | 1.9.16, 1.9.16p2, 1.9.16p6, 1.9.16p9, 1.9.16p10, 1.9.16p11
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| 185 |
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| 186 | There are some who believe that 1.9.15p8 was the best release and others
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| 187 | who would not want to be without the latest. Whatever your perception we
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| 188 | hope that 1.9.17 will close the gap and convince you all that the long
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| 189 | wait and the rolling changes really were worth it. Here is functionality
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| 190 | and a level of code maturity that ..., well - you can be the judge!
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| 191 |
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| 192 | Happy SMB networking!
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| 193 | Samba Team
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| 194 |
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| 195 | ps: The bugs are ours, so please report any you find.
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| 196 | ---------------------
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| 197 |
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| 198 | ---------------------
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| 199 | It's now October 1998. We just got back from the 3rd CIFS conference
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| 200 | in SanJose. The Samba Team was the biggest contingent there.
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| 201 |
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| 202 | Samba 2.0 should be shipping in the next few weeks with much better
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| 203 | domain controller support, GUI configuration, a new user space SMB
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| 204 | filesystem and lots of other neat stuff. I've also noticed that a
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| 205 | search of job ads in DejaNews turned up 3900 that mention Samba. Looks
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| 206 | like we've created a small industry.
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| 207 |
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| 208 | I've been asked again where the name Samba came from. I might as well
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| 209 | put it down here for everyone to read. The code in Samba was first
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| 210 | called just "server", it then got renamed "smbserver" when I
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| 211 | discovered that the protocol is called SMB. Then in April 1994 I got
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| 212 | an email from Syntax, the makers of "TotalNet advanced Server", a
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| 213 | commercial SMB server. They told me that they had a trademark on the
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| 214 | name SMBserver and I would have to change the name. I ran an egrep for
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| 215 | words containing S, M, and B on /usr/dict/words and the name Samba
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| 216 | looked like the best choice. Strangely enough when I repeat that now I
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| 217 | notice that Samba isn't in /usr/dict/words on my system anymore!
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| 218 | ---------------------
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