Im use to;

# sa

*tab*

I use bash... but samba doesn't show up.. where is the samba binary? I checked the normal bin directories.. nothing.. i have teh samba.conf and manual and everything.. just can't find the freakin binary... doing a;

# locate samba

scrolls most of it's results and leaves me with var and usr/local/man listings n such...

please help! Im like.. not supose to be a newbie anymore this is getting bad

K, I managed to start samba through

# /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb start

but whats the contents of init.d supose to be? i know thats not the samba binary.. is it? it init.d just the direct that keeps links to service-based apps? i confuse.

init.d is used to store program initiation files (so that when you type "samba start" or "samba stop", it knows what to do). Just below the directory init.d (in rc.d) should be a few more directories, rc0.d, rc1.d, rc2.d, etc. These directories represent the different run levels (ie. rc3.d initiates when you switch to run level 3) and contain symbolic links to the files in init.d.

If you look inside the run level directories you'll see links in the format:

K11service

and

S11service

These links tell linux to either kill (K) or start (S) a service. The 2-digit number tells it in what order to execute each command (ie. K24 will be executed before K36 or S57). So, if you want samba to run when linux starts, you'll need to put a symbolic link to it in run level 3:

ln -sf /etc/rc.d/init.d/samba /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S99smb

and to stop it when linux shuts down, put a link in run level 0:

ln -sf /etc/rc.d/init.d/samba /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K00smb

I have been starting Samba by using rc.local. To my understanding this is pretty much like running shell commands after all other processes have been started on bootup. So I edited my rc.local file (located under /etc/rc.d/) and added the line: service smb start.

Here's my question: Would it be better to use the methods you described or is what I'm doing OK? The only disadvantage I can see is that the process isn't being killed, since we never sent a kill signal to that process when the machine shuts down. Would that be a problem?

Maybe I'm just being too much of a perfectionist.

Don't think so, it's exactly as you said... rc.local is loaded after everything else,
If it had been a firewall script or something security related I would have used the other option though