Using Samba

Networking Options with Samba

If you’re running Samba on a multi-homed machine (that is, one on multiple subnets), or even if you want to implement a security policy on your own subnet, you should take a close look at the networking configuration options:

For the purposes of this exercise, let’s assume that our Samba server is connected to a network with more than one subnet. Specifically, the machine can access both the 192.168.220.* and 134.213.233.* subnets. Here are our additions to the ongoing configuration file for the networking configuration options:

[global]
	netbios name = HYDRA
	server string = Samba %v on (%L)
	workgroup = SIMPLE

	#  Networking configuration options
	hosts allow = 192.168.220. 134.213.233. localhost
	hosts deny = 192.168.220.102
	interfaces = 192.168.220.100/255.255.255.0 \
                         134.213.233.110/255.255.255.0
	bind interfaces only = yes

[data]
	path = /home/samba/data
	guest ok = yes
	comment = Data Drive
	volume = Sample-Data-Drive
	writeable = yes

Let’s first talk about the hosts allow and hosts deny options. If these options sound familiar, you’re probably thinking of the hosts.allow and hosts.deny files that are found in the /etc directories of many Unix systems. The purpose of these options is identical to those files; they provide a means of security by allowing or denying the connections of other hosts based on their IP addresses. Why not just use the hosts.allow and hosts.deny files themselves? Because there may be services on the server that you want others to access ...