Jefferey Bianchine

Jefferey J. Bianchine has had an interesting career managing computing in a variety of challenging work environments since the 1980's. He has particularly enjoyed a career as more generalist than specialist, because of the broad range of experiences it has afforded: developing mission-critical applications; developing and delivering training; consulting during civil litigation; troubleshooting; and teaching as adjunct faculty at local colleges.

As a professional systems administrator in a variety of settings he has managed operations based upon Apple, SGI, Sun, and various x86 systems, deploying both proprietary and open operating systems and applications. Can you hazard a guess at which he prefers?

Jefferey earned degrees in Psychology and Management from Syracuse University. He bills himself as an MBA, "that can actually DO stuff," when asked about his degree. His first public speaking about computers was a demonstration of his brand new NEC 8201 for the Syracuse Kaypro User Group and his most recent before SCALE 3X was SambaXP 2003.

Developing Management Strategies and Tools for Samba

Samba provides resource sharing services that are absolutely vital to the successful migration to a Free and Open Source infrastructure. Despite this gravity, installation is as simple as installing smbd and nmbd on resource sharing hosts and then configuring smb.conf to effectively describe the required sharing.

Simple, yes, but this is just the beginning of life with Samba. There are processes to monitor, logs to analyze, shares to administer, and users to manage. The very nature of cross platform integration is one of change (gradualand dramatic) so administrative tasks can become increasingly complicated over time.

This talk presents practical ideas about Samba planning and management, emphasizing configuration planning and tool development to facilitate ongoing administration. Existing administrative tools are examined and new tool development discussed.