I realised the other day, after restarting Samba on the main server for the umpteenth time to clear about 800 nmbd processes that were overrunning it, that I barely use Samba any more. It dawned on me that I have an almost entirely Microsoft-free household, and that there’s no need for me to run Samba at all. It was a very pleasant realisation!
My main machine that ran Windows on an almost-daily basis was the Sony laptop, and it’s running Kubuntu Feisty nowadays (except on rare occasions when I boot XP). Susan’s laptop is the holdout (running XP Home because of a crappy wireless card that I can’t get working with ndiswrapper), but she does no file server access — she prints occasionally, but converting her printer connections to IPP will see that off.
Having said all that though, I just know I won’t remove Samba. It’s just too… I don’t know… It’s like that shifting-spanner at the bottom of the toolbox — your dad always taught you not to use shifters because they burr the nuts, but there’ll always be that one Imperial bolt somewhere that your Metric ring-spanners won’t fit… Or the overtightened nut that someone else already burred with their shifting spanner… Or the days when you’re just too lazy to take all your separate spanners with you.
Probably as far as I’ll go will be to remove Samba from automatically starting on the server. For times when I boot the laptop to Windows and need something I’ve kept on the server, I can start Samba manually.
A home network that’s free of SMB/CIFS… Yay!
Crossed Wires 