SAMBA

Samba is a free software re-implementation of SMB/CIFS networking protocol, originally developed by Australian Andrew Trigell. SAMBA is released under the GNU General Public License. The name Samba comes from inserting one vowel, twice, into the name of the standard protocol used by the Microsoft Windows network file system, "SMB" (Server Message Block).

As of version 3, Samba not only provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients but can also integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) or as a Domain Member. It can also be part of an Active Directory domain. Samba runs on most Unix and Unix-like systems, such as Linux, Solaris, and the BSD variants, including Apple's Mac OS X Server (which was added to the Mac OS X client in version 10.2). Samba is standard on nearly all distributions of Linux and is commonly included as a basic system service on other Unix-based operating systems as well.