I do!
tldr; It provides file and print functionality over networks, providing inter-operability with protocols adopted by windows.
tldr;tldr; Access linux files from windows and vice-versa
I recently had the misfortune of having to redo my smb.conf
(Samba configuration) on my Raspberry Pi and ran into some issues getting everything running smoothly. After lots and lots of internet searches, and conferring with a friend that’s pretty amazing at networking, I finally got it working. Here are some mistakes I made that you may be able to learn from:
Ensure that network discovery is on, on your Windows computer I’m not 100% sure this is necessary but shouldn’t do much harm for private networks (that are secure… if you’re worried about that).
Ensure that you have samba-common-bin
or it’s equivalent (bundle that comes with useful tools like smbpasswd) installed
samba-common-bin
started to contain all the utility programs associated with samba. Maybe this was always the case. Either way, make sure you have it installed.Make a backup of your current/working smb.conf
You can find samba logs in /var/log/samba/
Check your samba configuration with testparm
testparm
is wonderful, it even shows you the optimal (reduced) set of configuration that your handwritten config represents!Ensure you can connect to your samba configuration server by using smbclient //<netbios name>/<share name>
Ensure that your computer is listening on port 445 by using netstat -plant
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:445 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 15339/smbd ... tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:139 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 15339/smbd
Ensure your firewall isn’t blocking port 445
Since I use ufw, I was able to quickly open some ports required for Samba. I found a great site that laid out the appropriate commands for UFW. I’ve reproduced what I ran here:sudo ufw allow proto udp to any port 137 from 192.168.1.0/24 sudo ufw allow proto udp to any port 138 from 192.168.1.0/24 sudo ufw allow proto tcp to any port 139 from 192.168.1.0/24 sudo ufw allow proto tcp to any port 445 from 192.168.1.0/24
Here are some of the most informative sites I had open while I was ripping my hair out:
And here’s what my smb.conf looked like at the end (non-optimized):
[global] workgroup = WORKGROUP netbios name = raspberrypi server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu) dns proxy = no log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m max log size = 1000 name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast wins support = yes log level = 3 ## Only bind ipv4 to prevent errors in log # bind interfaces only = yes # interfaces = lo eth0 wlan ## Host security hosts allow = 127.0.0.1 192.168.1.0/24 hosts deny = 0.0.0.0/0 # Remove CUPS connection error from log printing = bsd printcap name = /dev/null ## Guest security # security = share # map to guest = bad user # guest account = pi ## User security security = user # encrypt passwords = true passdb backend = tdbsam #obey pam restrictions = yes [media] path = /path/to/folder/with/data comment = Media browsable = yes read only = yes create mask = 0777 directory mask = 0777 public = yes available = yes valid users = pi only guest = no # guest ok = yes # guest only = yes