smbd is a daemon process that plays key role in providing

services. It listens to the service requests from other

machines and responds as specified in /etc/smb.conf (got the

importance of this file? ;-)

nmbd

nmbd is a daemon process that understands and replies to

netbios name service requests. Whenever its own name (the

machine it's running on) is specified, it responds with the IP

address of the machine it's running on.

smb.conf

This is the configuration file for Samba. All daemon processes

of Samba suite read this file which makes it extremely

important. I advise you to go through man pages and how-tos

before you sit down to edit this file. If you don't feel like

doing it, I have made an attempt of writing a generic file that

should satisfy your needs. You can use it but the condition is

that you will have to tell me how bad it is so that others find

it a little less bad ;-).

testparm

Once smb.conf is edited to meet your requirements, you have to

check it's validity. Here testparm comes for your rescue!! It

can point out most of the blunders that your smb.conf is likely

to cause.

testprns

This one points out printing related blunders.

Sharing others filespace and printers:

This is accomplished by a host of commands...

smbclient

smbclient lets you inquire about the services a machine offers.

All you have to do is smbclient -L hostname and it lists all

the services of hostname. If you want to browse through a

service, just do smbclient \\host\service. It will give you

an ftp like interface.

smbmount

Call it mapping \hostservice on drive U:!! You need to access

some services quite frequently. smbclient is good for quick

browsing but not feasible in such a case. So, here comes

smbmount. It lets you mount \hostservice on a directory just

the way you mount any filesystem. Just do smbmount

//host/service /path_to_mount_point and it's done. Access the

files/printers just as they are attached to your machine!!!

smbumount

Well, it's obvious!! You may want to unmount the filesystem