Using Samba

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 each and every configuration options listed below; we’ll go over each of them over the course of the upcoming chapters.

The [globals] Section

The [globals] section appears in virtually every Samba configuration file, even though it is not mandatory to define one. Any option set in this section of the file will apply to all the other shares, as if the contents of the section were copied into the share itself. There is one catch: other sections can list the same option in their section with a new value; this has the effect of overriding the value specified in the [globals] section.

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

[global] 
	log level = 1 
	max log size = 1000
	socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY 
	guest ok = no
[homes] 
	browseable = no
	map archive = yes
[printers] 
	path = /usr/tmp
	guest ok = yes
	printable = yes
	min print space = 2000
[test] 
	browseable = yes
	read only = yes
	guest ok = yes
	path = /export/samba/test

In the previous example, if we were going to connect a client to the [test] share, Samba would first read in the [globals] section. At that point, it would set the option guest ok = no as the global default for each share it encounters throughout the configuration file. This includes the [homes] and [printers] shares. When it reads ...