Using Samba

Appendix F. Sample Configuration File

This appendix gives an example of a production smb.conf file and looks at how many of the options are used in practice. The following is a slightly disguised version of one we used at a corporation with five Linux servers, five Windows for Workgroups clients and three NT Workstation clients:

# smb.conf -- File Server System for: 1 Example.COM  BSC & Management Office 
[globals]
	workgroup = 1EG_BSC
	interfaces = 10.10.1.14/24

We provide this service on only one of the machine’s interfaces. The interfaces option sets its address and netmask, where /24 is the same as using the netmask 255.255.255.0:

comment = Samba ver. %v
	preexec = csh -c `echo /usr/samba/bin/smbclient \
                     -M %m -I %I` &

We use the preexec command to log information about all connections by machine name (%m) and IP address (%I):

# smbstatus will output various info on current status
	status = yes
	browseable = yes
	printing = bsd

	# the username that will be used for access to services
	# specified with 'guest = ok'
	guest account = samba

The default guest account was nobody, uid -1, which produced log messages on one of our machines saying “your server is being unfriendly,” so we created a specific Samba guest account for browsing and printing:

# superuser account - admin privilages to shares, with no # restrictions # WARNING - use this with care: files can be modified, # regardless of file permissions admin users = root # who is NOT allowed to connect to ANY service invalid users = @wheel, mail, ...