DevOps / Sys Admin Q & A: Linux - Samba

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What is Samba?

Samba file server allows files to be shared across Windows, MacOS, and Linux systems.

The Samba is a collection of programs that implements the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol and provides Active Directory (AD) services.

In this post, we're going to install Samba. For testing, we'll use smbclient as a client instead of testing it with Windows.

Install and configure Samba

Samba can be easily installed with the following command:

$ sudo yum install samba

Let's configure it. Add the following lines to /etc/samba/smb.conf:

[data]
	comment = data
	path = /data
	read only = No

Then run 'testparm' to verify the config is correct:

$ testparm
Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf
Loaded services file OK.
Server role: ROLE_STANDALONE
...

Start and check the status:

$ sudo systemctl start smb

$ sudo systemctl status smb
● smb.service - Samba SMB Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/smb.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-08-10 17:22:54 UTC; 9s ago
     Docs: man:smbd(8)
           man:samba(7)
           man:smb.conf(5)
 Main PID: 1344 (smbd)
   Status: "smbd: ready to serve connections..."
   CGroup: /system.slice/smb.service
           ├─1344 /usr/sbin/smbd --foreground --no-process-group
           ├─1346 /usr/sbin/smbd --foreground --no-process-group
           ├─1347 /usr/sbin/smbd --foreground --no-process-group
           └─1348 /usr/sbin/smbd --foreground --no-process-group

Aug 10 17:22:54 ip-172-31-0-52.ec2.internal systemd[1]: Starting Samba SMB Daemon...
Aug 10 17:22:54 ip-172-31-0-52.ec2.internal smbd[1344]: [2020/08/10 17:22:54.404005,  0] ../../lib/util/become_daemon.c:136(daemon_ready)
Aug 10 17:22:54 ip-172-31-0-52.ec2.internal systemd[1]: Started Samba SMB Daemon.
Aug 10 17:22:54 ip-172-31-0-52.ec2.internal smbd[1344]:   daemon_ready: daemon 'smbd' finished starting up and ready to serve connections

$ sudo systemctl enable smb
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/smb.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/smb.service.

Let's add the samba service to firewallD and relax SElinux:

$ sudo firewall-cmd --add-service samba --permanent
success

$ sudo setenforce permissive

Now we need to add a samba user and the user should match the linux user:

$ sudo smbpasswd -a khong
New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:
Added user khong.

Testing Samba with smbclient

The best testing is to accessing the shared disk from Windows. But in this post, we'll just use Samba client.

Checking the Samba client from yum and install:

$ yum provides */smbclient
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Determining fastest mirrors
 * base: d36uatko69830t.cloudfront.net
 * extras: d36uatko69830t.cloudfront.net
 * updates: d36uatko69830t.cloudfront.net
base/7/x86_64/filelists_db                                                                                                | 7.1 MB  00:00:00     
extras/7/x86_64/filelists_db                                                                                              | 217 kB  00:00:00     
updates/7/x86_64/filelists_db                                                                                             | 2.1 MB  00:00:00     
samba-client-4.10.4-10.el7.x86_64 : Samba client programs
Repo        : base
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/bin/smbclient



samba-client-4.10.4-11.el7_8.x86_64 : Samba client programs
Repo        : updates
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/bin/smbclient

$ sudo yum install samba-client

Now that the client has been installed, let's check if it can access the /data share. We don't need to type in password here:

$ smbclient -L //localhost
Enter SAMBA\centos's password: 
Anonymous login successful

	Sharename       Type      Comment
	---------       ----      -------
	print$          Disk      Printer Drivers
	data            Disk      data
	IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (Samba 4.10.4)
Reconnecting with SMB1 for workgroup listing.
Anonymous login successful

	Server               Comment
	---------            -------

	Workgroup            Master
	---------            -------

We successfully set up Samba linux!