HOWTO: Setup Samba peer-to-peer with Windows

[closeyourwindows]

This is by far the best guide I have seen. It worked on the first try and without a reboot. I have been struggling with samba for some time now and this guide is great. Thanks.

[gary4gar]

awesome tuttorial mate
keep it up, very good work done
keep more like this cumming

[penguinfan]

Thanx Stormbringer, we need more penguins like u. This is the simplest & best howto by far. I got samba working 1st time and without reboot.

[Stormbringer]

Thanks for all your cheers ... I'm glad the guide works out that smoothly as it has been a rather quick edit.

[mwells]

Hi,

Firstly many thanks for the how-to it looks awesome . .and have printed it off allready!!

I just wondered if I could ask a stupid question as there is something that I havnt quite understood (about samba, not from your tut), and that is about the passwords.

[b]
-> force user = YOUR_USERNAME
-> force group = YOUR_USERNAME

Well, this should say it all. Replace "YOUR_USERNAME" with the name you use for login (no spaces!).

Example:

force user = stormbringer
force group = stormbringer

Am i putting in the passwords for the Linux account?

I get a little confused as I know samba can take the password from the windows logon session (i think) . . and this can somehow be used to tie into a user of matching name on the linux system

For instance i want to make my home directory viewable and writable by me. . and have it password protected, but how would I do this?

hope they arn't too stupid a question to ask, and once again thanks for the how-to

/Matt

[Stormbringer]

I just wondered if I could ask a stupid question as there is something that I havnt quite understood (about samba, not from your tut), and that is about the passwords.

Am i putting in the passwords for the Linux account?

In the section you quoted from my howto you have to put in your username - not your password!

force user = mwells
force group = mwells

This assumes your useraccount on windows AND linux is actually called "mwells". Please change it to your setting.

I get a little confused as I know samba can take the password from the windows logon session (i think) . . and this can somehow be used to tie into a user of matching name on the linux system

Add your useraccount to samba (the smbpasswd thing) and Samba should grant your Windows box access automatically!

Just to stress it once again - this'll only work if both useraccounts on both computers and both OS's have the very same username/password combo. If this isn't the case then it won't work out automatically.

For instance i want to make my home directory viewable and writable by me. . and have it password protected, but how would I do this?

REMOVE the semicolons from the lines in the [homes] section (in smb.conf, everything that is written after a semicolon is considered to be a remark) ... make it look like the following example ...

[homes]
    valid users = %S
    create mode = 0600
    directory mode = 0755
    browseable = no
    read only = no
    veto files = /*.{*}/.*/mail/bin/

hope they arn't too stupid a question to ask

From my point of view "stupid questions" don't exist --- no one know about everything...

[mwells]

ah sorry, i meant the username, my bad.

And thanks very much for the quick reply, that helped me out a lot.

So just to clarify, if there is a user 'mwells' on linux with password 'x', and a user with exactly the same credentials on a windows box they would sail straight in . .but if the user on windows had the same name but no (or a different password), would they then get a password prompt when trying to connect to the home file?

Also the create_mode and directory mode, is it a correct assumption to make that these place the writes on the files/directories created by the accessing user? and what would the %S rule give for valid users?

Once again, many many thanks for your help .. I realise i am being increadably lazy not reseaching this myself!

/Matt

[Stormbringer]

ah sorry, i meant the username, my bad.

No problem ...

So just to clarify, if there is a user 'mwells' on linux with password 'x', and a user with exactly the same credentials on a windows box they would sail straight in.

Yap - Windows (XP) should be able to find the shared folders of your Linux box as well as your home directory automatically in the Network Neighborhood as long as both users have the same login-credentials and as long as both computers are inside the very same workgroup (sorry, forgot to mention this).

but if the user on windows had the same name but no (or a different password), would they then get a password prompt when trying to connect to the home file?

If the user has the same name but no, or different, password, Windows _should_ prompt you for the password.

Also the create_mode and directory mode, is it a correct assumption to make that these place the writes on the files/directories created by the accessing user? and what would the %S rule give for valid users?

The "create mode" and "directory mode" lines are meant to keep the modes of the files nicely ... without these, Windows would create files and directories as 775 / 775 (rwxrwxr-x).

The default directory mode - inside of /home/<username> - is 755, and having mere datafiles executable by default wouldn't make much sense.

%S hold the username of the connection - so you will automatically connected to the right user-home.

I realise i am being increadably lazy not reseaching this myself!

In case you like to do some research: man smb.conf

[featherking]

Great guide,

Dont know if anyone stumbled across this problem but i was trying to share a folder with a space in the name. "//RON/iTunes Music" is the path to the folder i was trying to access from my linux box. I couldnt get it to work with the space; however, i found after some searching that samba accepts "\040" without quotes, as a space!

So if you want to share a folder with a space try it like this //RON/iTunes\040Music and you should be good to go.

Hope that helps somebody

-The King

[Stormbringer]

Alternatively you may put the UNC-Path inside of Quotes to make it work...

i.e. "\\RON\iTunes Music"

Example from within the command-line of Windows

net use x: "\\RON\iTunes Music" /persistent:yes