Samba and Windows 7 HomeGroup

Question

I read about HomeGroup for Win 7 in this article.

And I'm wondering is it possible to join Samba server 3.x to Win7/HomeGroup?

As I understand rightly, the smb protocol was not changed for Win7/HomeGroup. I do not want to leave samba server without any password at all. And it is not useful to use "special" password only for samba server. And I don't have AD server at my home where I'll use it.

So it will be very great to join samba server to the win7/HomeGroup, don't puting any password (only one time in samba config file) when accessing shares but in the same time use more secure connection.

Answer 1

In short the answer is mixed with several "yes"es "no"s. Not all versions of the SMB protocol are the same. Since the dark-ages of computing SMB has changed quite a lot. Samba 3 (the most common version out there) is based on the old NT4 domains with tweaks to better-support more advanced smb communication. Samba 3 does NOT implement Active Directory as a domain controller. Not even slightly. It can, however, function as a member of the domain. On the flip-side... Windows 7 still understands how to interact with an NT4 based domain which samba3 can emulate VERY well. It won't have all the spiffy bells & whistles that the "HomeGroup" offers... but for basic central authentication & network shares... it works just fine.

Samba4 does have much more support for Active Directory, including being a domain controller in Active Directory. It is VERY alpha at the moment... and might be many years before they have a stable Beta... and even longer before it's considered 'stable'.