Using Samba, Second Edition

Special Sections

Now that we’ve gotten our feet wet with variables, there are a few special sections of the Samba configuration file that we should talk about. Again, don’t worry if you do not understand every configuration option listed here; we’ll go over each of them in the upcoming chapters.

The [ global] Section

The [global] section appears in virtually every Samba configuration file, even though it is not mandatory. There are two purposes for the [global] section. Server-wide settings are defined here, and any options that apply to shares will be used as a default in all share definitions, unless overridden within the share definition.

To illustrate this, let’s again look at the example at the beginning of the chapter:

[global]
    workgroup = METRAN
    encrypt passwords = yes
    wins support = yes
    log level = 1 
    max log size = 1000
    read only = no
[homes] 
    browsable = no
    map archive = yes
[printers] 
    path = /var/tmp
    printable = yes
    min print space = 2000
[test]
    browsable = yes
    read only = yes
    path = /usr/local/samba/tmp

When a client connects to the [test] share, Samba first reads the [global] section and sets the option read only = no as the global default for each share it encounters throughout the configuration file. This includes the [homes] and [test] shares. When it reads the definition of the [test] share, it then finds the configuration option read only = yes and overrides the default from the [global] section with the value yes.

Any option that appears before the first marked section ...