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From: Patrick Callahan on 25 Mar 2010 07:05
artificer wrote:

> I have good experience on windows server administration but only
> general unix/linux knowledge. I am looking a distro to be use as a
> server for file and printing, domain controller (SAMBA) and proxy
> server for 25 windows client computers.
>
> I know that all linux distros are capable of doing that but I am
> looking for a distro with a UI that will be more comfortable to a
> windows administrator. Also I am looking for a distro that have a long
> support time.
> I first considered ubuntu LTS Server but I realized that it have no UI
> ( I mean by default). And as far as I know it don't have good UI for
> admins. Please correct me if I am wrong.
>
> Them I considered openSUSE because of the YAST control panel but it
> have a life cicle of 8 months so I am afraid that I will end up having
> to reinstall or upgrade every year
>
> Can anybody please give recommendations on this case?

There are basically 2 ways to do use GUIs to configure SAMBA/CIFS servers,
and neither of them requires you to install a GUI on the server.

1.) Use web-based administration tools. There is for Samba, for example, a
tool called SWAT, which serves a website on your Samba server that you can
use to configure it.
2.) Use X11 GUI apps like system-config-samba or gadmin-samba remotely. To
do this, you need to have a program called "xauth" on your server box, in
addition to an SSH server (which pretty much any server distro will come
with). To run the apps, just start up an SSH session with X forwarding
enabled and run the relevant application. This will use a lot of
bandwidth/may be slow. There are other ways of doing this more efficiently
if the performance is a problem. This is just the simplest.

Of course, you could give the Linux way a try. I honestly think this would
just be easiest while configuring the domain accounts/permissions will
probably be difficult, Samba's plain-text config file can be dead simple for
individual file and print shares. A GUI, on the other hand, is guaranteed to
overwhelm you with options you can't really search through.

I've got a little computer sitting in the lap drawer of my desk running
Samba as a print server for my cheap-non-networked printer. Here's the
entry:

=====================
[Samcat]
comment = Samsung ML-2510 Series
path = /var/spool/samba
read only = No
create mask = 0700
guest ok = Yes
printable = Yes
printer name = Samcat
=======================

Anyhow, let me know if you want more info on implementing any of those
options.
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