Operation Sheet 6: File Server Installation in Linux using
Samba
Objectives: After the end of the activity, the students will be able to:
Install and Configure Samba Server
Create a user and workgroup to access samba share
Configure anonymous and secured shared
Access the shared file server in windows client machine
Procedure:
Samba is freely available, unlike other SMB/CIFS implementations, and allows for
interoperability between Linux/Unix servers and Windows-based clients.
Step 1: Check Windows Client network configuration
The hostname of my Ubuntu server is server1.tvetinstitute.localand the IP is 10.0.4.x
The Windows machine must be in the same workgroup. To check the value in the Windows
machine run the following command at cmd prompt:
netconfig workstation
The output will be like this:
The output will be like this:
Your Windows machine must be in the same Workstation domain as the Ubuntu server,
i.e. WORKGROUP in my case.
To make the windows machine reachable in Windows by its hostname, proceed like this. Open a
Windows terminal in administrator mode (you can reach the administrator mode by doing a
right-click on the Terminal icon in the program menu) and run the following command to open
the Windows hosts file:
notepad C:\\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
There you add the following red line and save the file:
[...]
10.0.4.X server1.tvetinstitute.local server1
The following steps have to be run as root user. Run:
sudo -s
on the shell of your Linux server to become the root user.
Step 2 .Anonymous Samba sharing
Samba is available in the Ubuntu repositories. The first step is to install the Samba Server and its
dependencies with apt.
apt-get install -y samba samba-common python-glade2 system-config-samba
It will install the Samba version 4.3.9-Ubuntu.
To configure samba, edit the file /etc/samba/smb.conf. I will use nano as editor and make a
backup of the original file before I start to change it. The backup file is
named /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak
cp -pf /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak
cat /dev/null > /etc/samba/smb.conf
Open the Samba configuration file with nano:
nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
And add the following lines.
[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = Samba Server %v
netbios name = ubuntu
security = user
map to guest = bad user
dns proxy = no
#============================ Share Definitions
==============================
[Anonymous]
path = /samba/anonymous
browsable =yes
writable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
force user = nobody
Step 3: Create Shared Directory
Then I'll create a directory for the anonymous share.
mkdir -p /samba/anonymous
Set the correct permissions.
chmod -R 0775 /samba/anonymous
chown -R nobody:nogroup /samba/anonymous
And restart Samba to apply the new configuration.
servicesmbd restart
Now you can access the Ubuntu sharing in Windows by entering "\\server1" in the windows
search field of the menu or use the network browser of the Windows file explorer to connect to
the share.
Try to upload a file by Drag&Drop to the share to see if it is working correctly.
You can cross check the content at server also.
ls -la /samba/anonymous/
root@server1:/samba/anonymous# ls -la /samba/anonymous/
total 16
drwxrwxr-x 2 nobody nogroup 4096 Jun 1 18:46 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jun 1 18:39 ..
-rwxr--r-- 1 nobody nogroup 7405 Jun 1 18:42 test.odt
root@server1:/samba/anonymous#
4. Creating secured Samba server
For the password-protected share, I will create a group smbgrp and user till to access the Samba
server. I'll use "howtoforge" as password in this example, please choose a custom and secure
password on your server.
addgroupsmbgrp
useraddtesfaye -G smbgrp
smbpasswd -a till
root@server1:~# smbpasswd -a till
New SMB password:gudeta
Retype new SMB password:gudeta
Added user till.
root@server1:~#
Now create the folder with the name "secured" in the /samba folder and give permissions like
this
mkdir -p /samba/secured
cd /samba
chmod -R 0770 secured
chownroot:smbgrp secured
Edit the Samba configuration file and add the following (red) lines at the end of the file:
nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
[...]
[secured]
path = /samba/secured
valid users = @smbgrp
guest ok = no
writable = yes
browsable = yes
servicesmbd restart
To cross-check the settings, run this command:
testparm
root@server1:/samba# testparm
Load smbconfig files from /etc/samba/smb.conf
rlimit_max: increasing rlimit_max (1024) to minimum Windows limit (16384)
Processing section "[Anonymous]"
Processing section "[secured]"
Loaded services file OK.
Server role: ROLE_STANDALONE
Press enter to see a dump of your service definitions <-- Press Enter
# Global parameters
[global]
netbios name = UBUNTU
server string = Samba Server %v
security = USER
map to guest = Bad User
dns proxy = No
idmapconfig* : backend = tdb
[Anonymous]
path = /samba/anonymous
force user = nobody
read only = No
guest ok = Yes
[secured]
path = /samba/secured
valid users = @smbgrp
read only = No
At the Windows machine, open the "\\server1" network device again, it will request a username
and password now. Enter the user details that you created above. In my case, the values
were user=till and password=howtoforge.
We can check the file at the Ubuntu server like this:
ls -la /samba/secured/
root@server1:/samba# ls -la /samba/secured/
total 16
drwxrwx--- 2 root smbgrp 4096 Jun 1 19:25 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jun 1 18:49 ..
-rwxr--r-- 1 till till 7405 Jun 1 18:42 test.odt
root@server1:/samba#
Now we have a successfully configured Samba server with an anonymous and a secured share on
Ubuntu 16.04 :)
