SAMBA
Samba is one of the most used, and important server in any industry that prefers Linux Servers, with Windows Clients.
For sharing files which are located in your Linux System, Samba servers are set up with all the clients using Windows Operating System.
So samba is quite handy, because you don’t have to go takes files in Pen-drive from the Linux machine and paste it in your machine. Just setup a Samba share in your Linux system, and give the IP of that system to all windows clients.
Once they put IP with ‘\’ in run, the share would be right in-front of them, provided they exist on the same Network.
This configuration is same for Debian based Operating system and Red-hat based Operating Systems.
Just for Debian based Operating system, use ‘apt-get’ instead of you in step 1.
So to set up and configuring a Samba Server follow these steps.
1. yum install samba
Install samba with yum, if you don’t have it.
Install samba
2. vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
Once Samba is installed, Create a backup of the conf file which is located in /etc/samba. Then open its configuration file using vi or any of your favorite editors.
open configuration file
3. Go to the end. You’ll see the share definitions.
That is how to define a share in Samba.
First line indicates the ‘Name’ of the Share.
The ‘Path’ shows the path of the folder, you want to share.
If ‘Browserable’ is yes, you can browse that folder.
If ‘Writable’ is yes you can write in the files of that folder.
You can even define writable only for a specific group using ” +’groupname’ “.
Valid users contain the list of users, or groups who can use that folder.
If ‘guest ok‘ is yes, any guest can use that folder.
Share definitions
4.
groupadd 'groupname'
useradd 'username'
usermod -G 'groupname' 'username'
The groupadd command will add a new group. Useradd is used to add a new user in the Operating System.
usermod -G ‘groupname’ ‘username’ is used to add that new user to the earlier group we created. The -‘G’ switch is used to add a particular user to particular group.
Adding a new group and user.
5. smbpasswd -a 'username'
smbpasswd -a is used to assign a password to a particular user of that group.
Assigning password to new user.
6. /etc/init.d/smb restart
/etc/init.d/nmb restart
Since you changed the configuration service, restart ‘smb’ and ‘nmb’ services. If you’re services are running, they would restart, if they are not running. it’ll start the service.
Restart services.
7. ifconfig
Check your machine’s IP with ‘ifconfig’ command. Remember that IP, because you will need it when you want to connect from windows.
Check IP address.
8. Enter IP of Linux Machine in ‘run’.
Open run in any windows machine that is in the same network, as of our Samba Server and enter’\[ip]’
where [ip]= IP address of Linux Machine.
Enter IP address in run with ‘\’ as prefix.
9. Enter Password.
Since you gave a password to particular username using ‘smbpasswd’ command, it will ask you the username and password. Make sure that you enter that particular username and that password. Else you won’t get access to the samba share.
Authentication
10. Check your share.
Just check if you can see the names of the share that you gave in the share definition above.
Check your share
11. Try opening those shares.
Opening share
Share folder
Opening a file.
So this is how you configure a Samba server, to share folders and files with Windows clients .