mini_banner

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Quick & Dirty Samba Guide

This is my very inelegant Samaba guide. For over a year I've been struggling to get Samba working properly. This is the best configuration I have found so far. I don't need to share a printer, I just need to get my laptop and desktop to share a couple of folders. This guide does just that, it allows you simple access to folders on different computers. If you guys have any suggestions or a better understanding of Samba please share them.

Step 1: Setup
Install Samba
sudo apt-get install samba

Stop Samba services
sudo /etc/init.d/samba stop

Backup your old samba.config
sudo mv /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.template

Create a blank samba.conf file
sudo touch /etc/samba/smb.conf
Start samba services
sudo /etc/init.d/samba start

Add a user
sudo smbpasswd -L -a (username you want to add)

Enable user
sudo smbpasswd -L -e (username you want to add)

Step 2: Create a name for your network:
Go to System>Administration>Shared Folders
shared menus

You should see this, In the General Properties Tab:
Screenshot-Shared Folders

Enter a Network Name, if networking with a Windows or Mac make sure you have the same network name entered for all your computers.

Step 3: Share a folder
To share a folder right click the folder you want to share, select the share folder option.
share_a_folder

A box will pop up asking you how you want to share the folder and, if you want to make it read only. (These are my default settings)
Screenshot-Share Folder

To browse a network, go to Places>Networks
network menu
edited by pHreaksYcle

3 comments:

lsutiger said...

Thanx for the post Reddead!
But if you are going to to do this with a windows domain server, ya gotta be careful.
Follow this post and click on the link in Herman's Post. The time on the linux box vs the windows server was the security breach (NTP vs UTC).

Drew Martell said...

Thanks for the tip! Funny how I just got Samba working perfectly the day before you posted this though :)

I await your next tip

hawk said...

"This is my very inelegant Samaba guide."
You don't say? ;)

Do you know if it's possible for Samba to share folders on an external drive through the same machine? I couldn't get it to work. They'd show up but couldn't be accessed by anyone. I'm assuming it has to do with the permissions on the external drive and not the Samba config, since I could share folders that were directly on the laptop's harddrive.

Completely unrelated question: What are your thoughts on the 64-bit version?