Samba Quick Howto

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guard0 · Post by **guard0** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 3:09 am

here's the point-n-click, easy way to do it

emerge LinNeighborhood

Sheepdogj15 · Post by **Sheepdogj15** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 3:14 am

guard0 wrote:here's the point-n-click, easy way to do it

emerge LinNeighborhood

oooooohh, i'll have to try that out. thanks.

rush_ad · Post by **rush_ad** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 1:13 pm

guard0 wrote:here's the point-n-click, easy way to do it

emerge LinNeighborhood

a good program but doesnt look so good. i'd rather configure nautilus to do the same. for kde, smb4k is pretty good.

guard0 · Post by **guard0** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 10:56 pm

rush_ad wrote:a good program but doesnt look so good. i'd rather configure nautilus to do the same. for kde, smb4k is pretty good.

yeah, i hear ya, but this is easier to get going at first..

darkphader · Post by **darkphader** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 9:28 pm

It is a good idea to keep in mind that Samba is not smbfs and does not use or rely on smbfs. To paraphrase John Terpstra (author of some Samba docs): the user-space tools smbmount, smbumount, et al are part of the smbfs kernel driver package (not Samba). They are shipped with Samba because they use common libraries with Samba.

My recommendation would be to avoid smbfs and use cifs (also a kernel driver) instead. Smbfs has some problems, one being a 2GB limit.

Chris

rush_ad · Post by **rush_ad** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 10:52 pm

My recommendation would be to avoid smbfs and use cifs (also a kernel driver) instead. Smbfs has some problems, one being a 2GB limit.

2GB directory limit or file limit?

darkphader · Post by **darkphader** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 10:58 pm

rush_ad wrote:2GB directory limit or file limit?

Either. You will truncate files larger than 2GB and you will not see all of the files in a directory over 2GB.

Chris

darkphader · Post by **darkphader** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:06 pm

Some added clarification: Samba is used to act as an smb "server" - to share your files Windows style. While smbfs or cifs is used to mount smb shares (Windows, Samba, Dave, etc.).
You don't use Samba to mount shares and you don't use smbfs or cifs to serve shares.

Chris

darkphader · Post by **darkphader** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:08 pm

robbyjo wrote:It would be very nice if there's a way to "copy" user's passwords over to Samba without requiring the user to reinput the passwords.

Since the password encryption for Windows is different and Linux encrypted passwords cannot be decrypted this is impossible.

Chris

Sheepdogj15 · Post by **Sheepdogj15** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:19 pm

darkphader wrote:Some added clarification: Samba is used to act as an smb "server" - to share your files Windows style. While smbfs or cifs is used to mount smb shares (Windows, Samba, Dave, etc.).
You don't use Samba to mount shares and you don't use smbfs or cifs to serve shares.

Chris

ok, i get it... so you don't need smbfs (nor cifs) if you only serve out from the Linux box, but you must have one or the other only if you mount a share from a Windows box (or another Linux box running Samba, but if you wanted to do that you might as well use NFS)?

i'll have to change the Howto later to reflect this, especially regarding cifs. thanks for pointing it out.

Since the password encryption for Windows is different and Linux encrypted passwords cannot be decrypted this is impossible.

well i you knew the tricks of the trade, you could brute force it right?

(yes it would be pointless, i'm just sayin'.)

darkphader · Post by **darkphader** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:34 pm

Sheepdogj15 wrote:ok, i get it... so you don't need smbfs (nor cifs) if you only serve out from the Linux box, but you must have one or the other only if you mount a share from a Windows box (or another Linux box running Samba, but if you wanted to do that you might as well use NFS)?

Yes, NFS would probably be best for Nix to Nix communication. But if you have to serve them up for Windows as well it's probably less problematic to use smb/cifs to connect from your nix systems.

Sheepdogj15 wrote:
darkphader wrote:Since the password encryption for Windows is different and Linux encrypted passwords cannot be decrypted this is impossible.
well i you knew the tricks of the trade, you could brute force it right? :lol: (yes it would be pointless, i'm just sayin'.)

Yes, probably more correct to say something like "so time consuming to be virtually useless".

Chris

Sheepdogj15 · Post by **Sheepdogj15** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:43 pm

LMBO! pretty much.

Sheepdogj15 · Post by **Sheepdogj15** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 9:47 pm

updated the Howto to reflect usage of CIFS instead of SMB filesystem.

Sheepdogj15 · Post by **Sheepdogj15** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 6:23 am

Updated the howto with password encryption. Also a comment on authenticating under the hood.

With regards to password encryption, you might want to redo your samba user accounts (e.g. "smbpasswd -x [user]" and then "smbpasswd -a [user]"), but it doesn't seem like you need to on initial inspection.

Also, i now realize that i'm breaking with Filesystem Hierarchy Standard in the Howto. it's not essential, but recommended, that the samba share be a folder in the user home folder (e.g. /home/justin/stuff) or the user's home folder itself. and if you just create it with the Linux user of the same name etc. of the smb/windows user, the folder permissions should already be set as needed.

nostabo · Post by **nostabo** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 6:32 am

Is it possible to "run" windows applications from a Linux/Samba server? I have a Dentist friend who would like to replace his peer network with a Linux server based TCP/IP network. The problem is he has a Windows application that stores financial, office management and x-ray data that runs off his peer "server". He would still need to have the same centralized application running on whatever type of server he upgrades to. Can his app run on a FAT32 partition on a Linux/Samba server?

He also needs to share his DSL connection from the server...

darkphader · Post by **darkphader** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 7:24 pm

nostabo wrote:Is it possible to "run" windows applications from a Linux/Samba server? I have a Dentist friend who would like to replace his peer network with a Linux server based TCP/IP network. The problem is he has a Windows application that stores financial, office management and x-ray data that runs off his peer "server". He would still need to have the same centralized application running on whatever type of server he upgrades to.

This, in a way, depends on what you mean by running off his peer server. Does the app actually run on the "server", or is it running from the "server", where the "server" is just supplying the data files and or the application code? If it's just supplying the data, and or the code (the clients load the code through the network), then it's pretty straightforward.
If the application, or some part of it, truly must be running on the server then you are probably out of luck. You could try wine (probably not a good idea) or some VM technology, but you're probably better maintaining a Windows box.

nostabo wrote:Can his app run on a FAT32 partition on a Linux/Samba server?

Frankly I wouldn't use FAT32 for anything like this. The network doesn't expose the underlying file system.

nostabo wrote:He also needs to share his DSL connection from the server...

Get a cable/DSL router, don't bother the server with this.

Chris

Donkey_Breath · Post by **Donkey_Breath** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:55 am

Sheepdogj15 wrote:
You should now be able to connect in. To do so, open Windows Explorer in Windows, and type in \\(computer name)\(share). Remember those are forward slashes not backslashes. so for my set up, it would be \\thebeast\smb

Ermm... I don't mean to nitpick, but that's kind of confusing. Those are backslashes.

Great guide otherwise.

Jykke · Post by **Jykke** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:13 am

I just newly realized that samba can be used to mount drives from windows to linux.
There is no problem with NTFS then, is there?
(Too bad you can't use this way to mount local windows partitions of a shared machine - since
windows is not running simultaneously)

I assume that you have to give your windows drives free to the network from windows before
samba can access them? (I mean I could not access a second windows machine in network
from another windows machine if the drive wasn't shared first)?

darkphader · Post by **darkphader** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:35 pm

Jykke wrote:I just newly realized that samba can be used to mount drives from windows to linux.
There is no problem with NTFS then, is there?
(Too bad you can't use this way to mount local windows partitions of a shared machine - since
windows is not running simultaneously)

I assume that you have to give your windows drives free to the network from windows before
samba can access them? (I mean I could not access a second windows machine in network
from another windows machine if the drive wasn't shared first)?

It would be more correct to say that you can use various "tools" to connect to Windows "shares".
The local filesystem is not of consequence as you are communicating via network protocols and do not directly access the filesystem.
As for the "tools", Samba is not necessary, you can build the kernel modules smbfs or cifs (recommended) which will allow mounting of the network shares. If desired you can use Samba's smbclient for ftp-like access to such shares.

Chris

nealbirch · Post by **nealbirch** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:38 am

xfce has a network server application which does much like linneighborhood.

sasq · Post by **sasq** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 12:45 am

And how to make a folder shared from Konqueror? It has different icons for shared folders and it offers additional tab in right-click menu, but it doesn't wor for me . How to make it work?

Sheepdogj15 · Post by **Sheepdogj15** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:14 am

just an small but serious update. in the howto, i had the create permissions set to "0760," when that should be "0750." 0750 will stop folks in the group (other than owner user) from writing to the share; 0760 will not.

i think directories need the executable bit set (1) for it to be accessed, so i don't think this is a critical security problem.

Also added a link, so that you can customize your permissions as you see fit.

SMoo · Post by **SMoo** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 1:23 pm

Sheepdogj15 wrote:thank you

another guide i looked at talked about a utility for that purpose, but i couldn't find it anywhere on my system. I'll search around and see if i can find another way to sync smb logins with the Linux logins.

Webmin has a utility for this... I use it all the time...

After webmin is isntalled, you can go into the configuration and set it to automagically set up a linux user as a samba user behind the scenes...

mattlinuxguy · Post by **mattlinuxguy** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:14 pm

awesome ty. i setup samba b4 just winging it. i did get it but not nearly as clean. and i didnt know about that fs thing.
im going to come back here when i setup samba on my new laptop

sorry for the useless reply its just so i can search my own name haa haa

Samba Quick Howto

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xfce utility for network shares