Configure SMB

Configure SMB Organic Design procedure

Here's an example of our samba configuration format for the /etc/samba/smb.conf file:

[global] workgroup = Foo server string = Foo server wins support = yes security = user encrypt passwords = yes password level = 3 passdb backend = tdbsam invalid users = root daemon bin sys mail sshd bind www-data browseable = yes writable = yes [staff] path = /shared/staff comment = Our staff files valid users = henry alan tabatha

• password level = 3 means account foo, Foo and FOO are all equivalent user names
• log level = 4 can be used to debug authentication and other problems, also directing at a single log file can help (instead of one per user)
• passdb backend = tdbsam means use the basic password backend instead of the older smbpasswd format or scalable ldapsam
• Note: whatever password backend is used, smbpasswd needs to be run for each user before they can begin accessing shares

Account synchronisation

The main issue with the initial configuration of Samba on the LAN server concerns the users and groups. What is the origin of the user/group information? and how does samba synchronise to it or use it to authenticate? Since all our servers run a wiki we decided to make the wiki the source of the users, passwords and groups information. To do this we instruct the local wiki daemon to set the unix and samba passwords whenever one is changed in the wiki. All this requires is to install the EventPipe extension on the server's administration wiki and ensure that it has a wiki daemon configured and running.

• Later we need to only synchronise accounts that are in a particular wiki group
• Later we should also allow the shares to be created and configured through FS records

Next steps

• You may want to configure VPN remote access to the smb shares

See also

• Configuration tutorial
• Controlling access to shares
• Authentication security
• Passwords