Setting up Samba to share your Linux folders to Windows in Fedora 8

[fadzly]

Hello everyone! This is my first post. And as a sign of gratitude towards the Linux community forums that has helped me with a lot through lots of forum, I thought I give it back through this how-to.

1. Try to get a static IP address for your Linux machine. It makes a WHOLE lot easier. In Linux
i. Click on System > Administration > Network
ii. I only have one ethernet card, which is eth0, so I click on that one and click Edit (from the top menu)
iii.Check on ‘Statically set IP addresses’ and enter all your IP stuff (address, subnet mask, default gateway address)

2. Samba should be installed by default in Fedora 8.
To fully access Samba, SELinux should either allow access for Samba (which I am NOT doing) or be fully turned off (my choice.)
Open the following file using your favourite text editor:
/etc/selinux/config

Look for the following line:
SELINUX=enforcing
Change to the following
SELINUX=disabled

After you have done that reboot your system.

3. Next, we have to open a few ports in your firewall so that clients can connect. Logging in as root, open a terminal window and type:

system-config-firewall-tui

You should see a blue screen with red buttons.

i. You must set Firewall as enabled.
ii. Click on ‘Customize’.
iii.From the next screen, Select Samba as a Trusted Service. You must also check that your Trusted Interface is the one you using for Samba
iv. Select OK once you are done.

4. Now we enable the automatic startup of the needed services, using the following commands in Terminal:
i. chkconfig smb on
ii.chkconfig nmb on

Once you are done, reboot your system

5. Now, we are going to edit the smb.conf file. Open etc/samba/smb.conf using your favourite text editor.
Copy the following into that file (you may want to make a backup of the original file first. And when you are copying, paste over everything.)

Fadzly’s smb.conf

[global]
workgroup = homegroup ;put your own workgroup name here
netbios name = samba ; this should be your own too
server string = Fadzly Samba Server
; hosts allow = 192.168.1
announce version = 5.0
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
passdb backend = tdbsam
security = user
null passwords = true
username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
name resolve order = hosts wins bcast
wins support = yes
printing = CUPS
printcap name = CUPS
syslog = 1
syslog only = yes
; guest ok = no
; guest account = nobody

;[homes]
; comment = Home Directories
; read only = No
; browseable = No

[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = Yes
browseable = No


[fadzlyhome]
path = /home/fadzly
valid users = fadzly
write list = fadzly
read only = No
available = yes
; The following hides all the dot files and hidden files
hide dot files = yes
veto files = /.?*/

[fadzly]
path = /mnt/linuxbkup/fadzly
valid users = fadzly
write list = fadzly
read only = No
available = yes

Save the file.

Points to note:

i. I did not share my home directories so I comment it
ii.The fadzly share is a share on another hard disk which I auto-mounted

6. Now we need to restart the samba service for the new smb.conf to kick in. use the following commands:

service smb restart
service nmb restart

7. Before we can actually connect to the Linux machine from your Windows machine, we need to make a few changes to your Windows Network Configuration.

i. Firstly open your Network Connections. Right click the connection that you use to connect to the web (active connection) and click on properties.
ii. General Tab > Find & click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) > Properties …. next ….
iii.General Tab> Advanced button > WINS > ADD
iv. Under TCP/IP WINS server type in the local IP address of your Linux box.
For example : 192.165.12.101
v. Then check on the radio button > Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP
vi. You will need to restart your computer first before the settings take into effect.

8. Finally, there are a few ways that you can access your Linux machine.

i. Mapping network drive (Permanent):
•Right click My Computer > Map Network Drive > Choose a letter for the drive.
•Under folder, type in the hostname/IP address and share folder
.e.g linuxcom\MyFiles (if you have WINS support) or
192.165.12.101\MyFiles

ii.Entering address on the Explorer bar (Temporary Access):
•Enter your hostname/IP address and share folder into the explorer bar.
e.g \\linuxcom\MyFiles or \\192.165.12.101\MyFiles

There you have it! A simple (but not 100% secure) way of sharing folders using Linux.

[LBCoder]

I suggest sharing a subdirectory of your home instead of the whole thing. Reason being that giving windows access to the whole thing allows windows to damage anything. If you share a directory like /home/fadzly/winshare, then windows can only damage data in THAT directory.

[khaytsus]

Garbage, dumb, and uniformed. If you think you need to disable selinux you fail first thing.

[nix]

What they are really saying is welcome to the forum - lmao! wth!

[khaytsus]

What they are really saying is welcome to the forum - lmao! wth!

Bad advice should be labelled as such, and there's plenty of it to go around.

[psyklops]

Garbage, dumb, and uniformed. If you think you need to disable selinux you fail first thing.

Bit harsh don't you think?

It looks like he's just trying to setup a home network sharing with Fedora and Windows. I've never run SElinux since it was introduced (Fedora Core 2, I think??), but then again, I don't have to really worry about implementing US Dept. of Defence mandatory style access control policies

[jkgruet]

khaytsus, what you say may be true, but I noticed that you did not modify the guide to make it more useful. It remains unclear from your post whether the "disable selinux" section is unneeded and may be removed, or if it should be kept but with changes to the rest of the guide.

[khaytsus]

khaytsus, what you say may be true, but I noticed that you did not modify the guide to make it more useful. It remains unclear from your post whether the "disable selinux" section is unneeded and may be removed, or if it should be kept but with changes to the rest of the guide.

I think I was fairly clear about not needing to disable SElinux, but okay ;-)

So just to be clear, SElinux does not need to be disabled, but you DO have some configuration to make in order for Samba and SElinux to coexist. No fault of either, simply a matter of how SElinux works to ensure that the wrong/unintended files are not being shared. Same thing with http and other daemons as well I suspect.

Here's the proper information on how to ensure your files can be shared via Samba with SElinux enabled: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SELinux/samba

There's also http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/14195.html which has basically the same info, with some additional tidbits.

[jkgruet]

khaytsus, thanks. The fedoraproject link pointed in the right direction. The SElinux in Fedora 12 (v.2.0.87-a.fc12) does not have some of the booleans noted in your fedoraproject.org/wiki link, but with a bit of exploring and use of system-configure-selinux, I was able to share a directory on my Fedora 12 system with my mandated Vista machine.

Thanks again.

[fedorajockey]

Have you created a Samba username and password?

use the following:

'smbpasswd -a <username>'

And also make sure in your smb.conf file, where you have specified your directory there is a

'valid users = <smb_username> '

[tr1pl3x]

. Firstly open your Network Connections. Right click the connection that you use to connect to the web (active connection) and click on properties.
ii. General Tab > Find & click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) > Properties …. next ….
iii.General Tab> Advanced button > WINS > ADD
iv. Under TCP/IP WINS server type in the local IP address of your Linux box.
For example : 192.165.12.101


why do you need to add WINS server on your client xp??

[rahamanbr]

Nice Post hope it will be helpful