Dancing the SAMBA: An Introduction to Living with Windows

Samba as a Server

The easiest way to configure samba as a server is to use the SWAT wizard(local link) to create an smb.conf file. You can then fine-tune the settings with SWAT. I will cover here a few important settings, that you would most likely want to set:

Global Options

• netbios name sets the "computer name" that would be assigned to your server. This defaults to the first part of your hostname, but may be set to any value.
• workgroup sets the workgroup your computer is listed in. This affects network browsing and defaults to "WORKGROUP" which is OK for a private network.
• server string is the comment for the server that is viewable while browsing.
• interfaces specifies what network interfaces, or netmask to listen on. If your network is connected to the Internet, specify your local interface only in this option. For example, 192.168.1.1/24.
• security defines what security model Samba should use.
• If set to SHARE, every share has one password, with no regard to users. Note however, that a UNIX user is still required. Use this mode if your users do not have local accounts on the server.
• If set to USER, a user needs to login with a username and password, and then gets access to shares according to server configuration. The user's account is used to access the files on the server.
• Other options exist, but should not interest home users.
• log level is a very useful option for debugging. The higher the value, the more information is logged. See the documentation for more sub-options. You can find the log files at /var/log/samba/.
• wins support enables your Samba server to act as a WINS server in your routed network. Set this option to yes only if you have a routed local network, and your Samba machine is the main server. The WINS server allows machines to find each other even on routed networks. You should never have more than one machine acting as a WINS server.
• wins server specifies the IP address of an external WINS server (running either Samba or Windows). Set this if you are on a routed network, and have a WINS server configured.
• guest account specifies the account to be used for guest access (defaults to nobody).
• map to guest specifies when to fallback to guest access, as opposed to denying access. Set to "Bad User" to allow guest access when the username is invalid.

Alon Altman