Samba Server Installation

Samba Administration & Security, for File Sharing, Printer Sharing, & Workgroups, part 1

Ok, first things first: If you don't already have the GUI installed for the Samba server administration, then you're going to need to yum (or apt-get, or whatever you use) it. Typically all the system administration front ends for Fedora and Redhat (and some other distros) applications are prefixed with a "system-config-" and then the application name. So, in this case, you would yum:
[pre] yum -y install samba samba-client samba-common samba-winbind system-config-samba [/pre]



That is also what you type from the terminal to start the gui for and administration application. Now, launch the samba configuration GUI, which is under System -] Administration -] Samba, if you're using the Gnome desktop. Then select the 'Preferences -] Server Settings' menu option.




This first part is pretty simple; it's just setting what others are going to be seeing from the network. The workgroup can be anything you want, but beware that in order for a winblows computer to see another computer in a workgroup, it must belong to that same workgroup. So, if you want you winblows machine, which belongs to 'workgroup a' to be able to see your samba shares, then name your samba's workgroup 'workgroup a'. Linux machines can see ANY workgroup, so that's not a problem at all.




This next tab -- security -- is how samba is going to authenticate the guest users. You will want to leave this tab how it is, unless you have special needs for your setup. Keep in mind that when authentication is set to user, it tried to authenticate the guest user's windows account against a linux user account on the local system (i BELIEVE, but i may need to double check this and edit it later, so don't take my word for it just yet...), which means that if you set samba to only allow certain users, they will have to have accounts on the local system as well. This is typical, and isn't a problem to setup; we'll go over that in a moment. I would not recommend using the guest account, for obvious reasons. Select "Ok" to move on.




Now we're going to add samba user accounts, so that we can authenticate users before allowing to to meddle in our filesystem. So, click the 'Preferences -] Samba Users' menu option to move on.




As you can see, i've already got my samba server set up, and my users are already added. And in a moment, you will too. Click on the 'Add User' option.




The 'Unix User Name' field is where you specify the Unix / Linux account for which you wish to add a samba account. That's right: the samba account's user MUST also be a valid Unix / Linux account. BUT, the good news is that the password doesn't have to be the same as their existing password. This is good, because if - for some reason - their samba password is compromised, their user account is still safe. So, in a sense, it helps to limit the amount of damage that can be done in a worst case scenario. Now, as far as i know (i will have to double check this and edit this part later if i'm wrong), the 'Winblows Name' does not have to be the same name as the Unix user name for that user, nor does it even have to be a valid winblows account. It's more like a handle, or nickname. I use the same name as my unix name, just to keep things simple.