Samba

Samba is useful for a creating a Network directory and share it with other PC, especially Windows.

Server

For creating a server who shares a drive

Installation Server

sudo apt-get install samba

Configuration

Under global add the following lines or uncomment them in your file etc/samba/smb.conf

[global]
        # Permission on newly created files and folders
        create mask = 0644
        directory mask = 0755

        # add user security
        security = user
        encrypt passwords = true
        map to guest = bad user

User

# Create User
sudo  smbpasswd -a username

New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:
Added user username.

# Activate User
sudo smbpasswd -e username
Enabled user username.

Creating Share

Add the end of the file /etc/samba/smb.conf add your shares

/etc/samba/smb.conf

[multimedia]
        comment = multimedia
        path = /mnt/multimedia
        browseable = yes
        read only = no

Restart Samba

# Linux in general
sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart
# Ubuntu >10.04
sudo initctl restart smbd

Test

To test samba and display all available shares for the current user type:

smbclient -L <hostname or ipname>

Client

For mounting a shared drive

Installation Client

Install samba tools.

sudo apt-get install samba smbfs

Create shared folder

Create before an empty folder where you want to mount your samba drive.

sudo mkdir /mnt/shared_folder_name

Set Up FSTAB

Open etc/fstab file and add a new entry.

/etc/fstab

# only read access
//SERVER/shares /MOUNTPOINT smbfs username=samba_user,password=samba_pass 0 0

# read / write access
//SERVER/shares /MOUNTPOINT smbfs username=samba_user,password=samba_pass,uid=this_user,gid=this_group 0 0