Posted on April 28, 2011 by Jonathan Moeller

Samba has a vast array of options and configuration settings, but here we’ll show you how to set up and configure a basic Samba server with one user.

For some problems I've experienced before see Past Problems at the end of this page.

First, you’ll need to install Samba. Make your way to a command prompt and type this command:

sudo apt-get install samba

Enter your password to authenticate, and apt will download and install Samba and its attendant utilities for you.

It is important to understand that Samba stores its own set of user accounts, separate from the main accounts, in the /etc/samba/smbpasswd file. That means you’ll need to create a separate Samba password for every user you want to access your file shares. You create this password using the smbpasswd command. For instance, if you wanted to create a Samba account for a user account named camalas, here’s how the command should look:

sudo smbpasswd -a camalas

Be sure to give camalas’s Samba account an appropriately strong password (make sure it includes uppercase, lowercase, punctuation, and numbers). Once camalas’s password is created, the next step is to create a directory for her to share. Begin by creating a folder named ‘test’ in camalas’s folder, which we’ll use for our first shared folder:

mkdir /home/camalas/test

(NOTE: DO NOT use sudo to create the folder, because then the owning user and group will be set as ‘root’, which means you won’t be able to access the folder using your Samba username and password.)

The next step is to edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file, the main configuration file for Samba. As always, make a safe backup copy of the original smb.conf file to your home folder, in case you make an error:

sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf ~

Now use vi to edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file:

sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

(If you’re using the desktop version of Ubuntu, you could use the graphical gedit editor instead.)

The smb.conf file is long and rather complex, but for the purposes of this demonstration, you can ignore most of it. Key down to the very end of the file and insert this text:

[test]

path = /home/camalas/test

available = yes

valid users = camalas

read only = no

browsable = yes

public = yes

writable = yes

(There should be no spaces between the lines, and note also that there should be a single space both before and after each of the equal signs.)

Here’s what some of the more important configuration options mean.

-The “[test]” gives the name of the file share.

-The “path” option specifies the location of the folder to be shared.

-The “available” option specifies that the file share is available to clients on the network.

-The “valid users” option details the users that are allowed to access the file share. In this case, we’ve set it so that only the camalas account can access it. You can add additional accounts here, if you prefer.

-The “read only” options specifies whether nor not clients will be allowed to write to the file share.

-The “writable” option specifies that data can be written to the file share.

The settings specified above will share the test folder we created earlier, and give your username and your username alone permission to read and write to the folder. Once you have input the changes, save smb.conf, exit vi, and restart Samba with this command:

sudo restart smbd

(This will force Samba to restart, re-reading its configuration files and activating the share you just created.)

Once Samba has restarted, use this command to check your smb.conf for any syntax errors:

sudo testparm

If you pass the testparm command, Samba should be working. Try accessing the share from another client on your LAN.

pprobs