20.08.2023

Configuring Samba on Debian

Intro

Samba is a protocol for exchanging information, its purpose is to implement enterprise-level file access applications and operate them on an enterprise LAN. Next, we'll walk through the process of configuring Samba on Debian, which consists of several steps.

Installing additional applications

First you need to update the apt cache and install the required software components. Open terminal and paste:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install samba

The command above will install necessary packages with their dependencies.

Manage Users

When deploy complete, we make and setup consumer to gain resources.
Do it:

sudo useradd -m user1

Change "user1" with the actual username
Upon completion of the creation process, we should create a password:

sudo passwd user1

And then assign the Samba group:

sudo smbpasswd -a user1

Preparing Shared Catalogs

After creating and configuring users, we create shares to which they will have access. Create a folder share1 along the path / media

mkdir /media/share1

Next, edit the Samba configuration file with a text editor, in this case nano:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

It is used for creation shared folders, grant access to them, and other important service settings.
Now make new resource and define access rights to it.
Make a folder "share1", set permissions for user1:

[share1]
path = /media/share1
read only = no
guest ok = no
valid users = user1

After making these, directory "share1" will be accessible for user1.

Restart Samba

After changing the settings, the service should be restarted:

sudo systemctl restart smbd.service

This command will restart the Samba service and commit any changes made to the configuration.

Availability check

Once configured, you can test access to shared folders from another host on the network. To check from the server itself, you can use the smbclient utility, which should first be installed:

sudo apt install smbclient -y

And then verify:

smbclient -U user1 //[IP_address|Server_name]/share1 -c 'ls'

Or by opening the file manager on another computer and typing in the address bar:

\\Debian_server_IP\share1

"Debian_server_IP" is the IP address of the newly configured server.
If everything was done correctly, then as a result you should see the contents of the "share1" folder.

Conclusion

Samba is a file sharing and network sharing tool.
The article describes the basic settings of this service in Debian Linux OS.

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