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Samba Windows File Sharing

Introduction

If you have ever dealt with Windows systems, you are likely aware of SMB (Server Message Block) for file sharing. If you are a seasoned Linux administrator, chances are that you have heard of Samba, but if you have not, Samba is the de facto open-source implementation of SMB to enable file sharing and Active Directory access from Linux machines to Windows networks.

Installation

You need to install Samba using dnf:

dnf install -y samba

Setting up a share

First, make a directory you want to share with Windows clients:

mkdir /var/store

Next, set the SELinux labels on the /var/store directory:

semanage fcontext -a -t samba_share_t  "/var/store(/.*)?"
restorecon -Rv /var/store

Replace /var/store with the directory to be shared.

Now configure Samba:

vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

In the smb.conf file, navigate to the bottom and insert the following:

[Share]
        path = /var/store
        browseable = yes
        writable = no
        read only = yes
        guest ok = yes

If you are unaware of the options above, they are:

  • path is the directory we are sharing. Set this to your respective directory (/var/store in our case).
  • browseable is to allow clients to browsing access. If you want to disallow browsing set this to no.
  • writable is to allow clients writing access. If you want to allow write access, set this to yes.
  • read only marks the share as read-only. If you want to allow write or execute access, set this to no.
  • guest ok is to allow non-authenticated users access to our share. If you want to deny guests, set this to no.

o test the configuration, you can run the following:

testparm

Enabling Samba

Once the configuration tests OK, open the Samba port in firewall-cmd:

firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=samba
firewall-cmd --reload

Next, you can enable Samba:

systemctl enable --now smb nmb

Accessing the Samba share

You can access the Samba share using the following URI (Note: replace SERVER_IP with the IP address or FQDN of your machine running Samba):

  • Windows: \\SERVER_IP
  • Linux or Mac: smb://SERVER_IP

SERVER_IP on the author's home network is 172.20.0.100, so while the instructions vary based on an operating system, the author will access the new share from their Fedora 40 notebook:

Fedora 40 Nautilus showing our Samba Share

All files accessible on the server are also available on client machines.

Conclusion

While SMB has a reputation for being Microsoft-centric, it is an industry standard, and your Samba share can be accessed from Linux, Mac, BSD, and even mobile devices. So congratulations, you are sharing your server's files now!

Author: Neel Chauhan

Contributors: Steven Spencer, Ganna Zhyrnova