Using Samba

A Basic Samba Configuration File

The key to configuring Samba is its lone configuration file: smb.conf . This configuration file can be very simple or extremely complex, and the rest of this book is devoted to helping you get deeply personal with this file. For now, however, we’ll show you how to set up a single file service, which will allow you to fire up the Samba daemons and see that everything is running as it should be. In later chapters, you will see how to configure Samba for more complicated and interesting tasks.

The installation process does not automatically create an smb.conf configuration file, although several example files are included in the Samba distribution. To test the server software, though, we’ll use the following file. It should be named smb.conf and placed in the /usr/local/samba/lib directory.^[12]

[global]
	workgroup = SIMPLE 
[test] 
	comment = For testing only, please
	path = /export/samba/test
	read only = no
	guest ok = yes

This brief configuration file tells the Samba server to offer the directory /export/samba/test on the server as an SMB/CIFS share called test. The server also becomes part of the named workgroup SIMPLE, which each of the clients must also be a part of. (Use your own workgroup here if you already know what it is.) We’ll use the [test] share in the next chapter to set up the Windows clients. For now, you can complete the setup by performing the following commands as root on your Unix server:

# mkdir /export/samba/test
# chmod 777 /export/samba/test ...