Category: SAMBA

Well, we all know FTP, HTTP and other protocols would do the trick, but they are not the fastest way. because of setup and other considerations, especially when we are planing to use both windows and linux in the transactions, a low overhead method would be samba, or windows network file sharing

In windows, it is simple, we all know how to share a folder, and we all know how to open a shared folder over the network, in linux it is just as simple.

The detailed explanation of how to setup the samba server and share a folder is already in a post, but from the client side, you can copy a file by simply mounting the shared drive onto the linux server and copy or move files like you would a normal file or folder.

To mount we can simply execute the following

1- Install the client tools to mount the folder
apt-get install cifs-utils

then
mkdir /hds
mkdir /hds/smbmount

mount -t cifs //192.168.15.116/sharedfolder /hds/smbmount -o username=techg,noexec

That’s it, now use CP and MV as you would normally

One problem i faced with this method before was that my WD My Book Live shares would not mount, it threw an error

mount error(22): Invalid argument
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

The logs did not provide much help either

CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22

Turns out that the WD MyBook Live has an older version of Debian, and samba on that device had a max-v of 2, so the solution is to connect while specifying which version of samba works

mount -t cifs //192.168.2.116/sharedfolder /hds/smbmount -o vers=2.0,username=techg,noexec

The values for Version can be 2.0 2.1 3.0

Mounting samba shares at boot time

My NAS server is always online, I switch my PC off while I am asleep, yes, being green may be a factor I claim, but the truth is, my personal machine has spinning hard drives, and my backups are not always up to date, so if a disk fails while I am asleep, and ticks it’s way to its own demise, I would then remember that I should have been more green, Anyway, let us get to the mounting

1- create the file /home/qworqs/.smbcredentials and fill it up with the contents below

username=qworqs 
password=qwarks
domain=

Now that we have our credentials stored somewhere, we can add the following line to our fstab file, yes, it makes no sense that I have a folder called /hds that I mount all my disks and network shares to, but I have been doing this since I was young

So, open the file /etc/fstab and add the following line

//192.168.1.100/sharename /hds/100share cifs credentials=/home/qworqs/.smbcredentials,rw,uid=qworqs,gid=qworqs,noauto,nofail,x-systemd.automount,_netdev      0       0

This tutorial was first written for Lenny, then tested on squeeze, wheezy… up to bullseye

In August 2021, I have revised this for Debian Buster (10) and Debian Bullseye (11).

If you have installed Debian Lenny with file sharing (in the lenny installer), you will need to add users to that installation and specify folders that need to be shared, here i will show you how to add a user and share a folder with that user.

If you have not installed file sharing while installing Debian lenny, you need to install them, the easiest way to do that is

apt-get install samba

Or if you like

run the command

aptitude

using the arrow keys and the enter key, expand “TASKS” then place the bar over File Server, then the plus sign to select it (Shift +), right after hit “g” then “g” on your keyboard to install them.

Once done, add the following lines to smb.conf

[public]
   comment = Public Folder
   path = /public
   writable = yes
   guest ok = yes
   guest only = yes
   force create mode = 775
   force directory mode = 775
[private]
   comment = Private Folder
   path = /private
   writable = yes
   guest ok = no
   valid users = @smbshare
   force create mode = 770
   force directory mode = 770
   inherit permissions = yes

Now to adding users, from the following 3 commands, After the second and after the third command, you will be asked to chose a password for the user joe

useradd yazeed -m -G users
passwd yazeed
smbpasswd -a yazeed

Now with this out of the way, you can also edit the following fields in the file /etc/samba/smb.conf

The following need to be edited

netbios name : Should become the name of the computer on the network, in windows, this is the machine’s name
hosts allow : If your network is like mine where PCs take IP addresses of the form 192.168.2.x, then this one should be 127. 192.168.2. where 127 is for the local machine, the following part of the IP is the part of the IP that prefixes the IP of all network machines that should be able to access this file server (usually you will change the 2 with a 0 or 1)
interfaces : 127.0.0.1/8 192.168.2.0/24, like above, if your IP subnet is not 192.168.2.x, change it here (usualy you will change the 2 with a 0 or 1)
remote announce : if your subnet does not start with 192.168.2. then change it to your own (usually you will change the 2 with a 0 or 1)
remote browse sync : if your subnet does not start with 192.168.2. then change it to your own (usualy you will change the 2 with a 0 or 1)

Now scroll down, you will see a sample folder, edit that to the folder you want to share, and copy it over and over again for any other folders that you want to share, You are done, now you should be able to open those folders from the network.