Samba on Fedora Core 1 - Part 2: Configuring Samba

Continuing our discussion from Part 1 of this tutorial, we edit the smb.conf file in /etc/samba/

[root@machinename samba]#cd /etc/samba
[root@machinename samba]#vi smb.conf

Under global settings,

[global]

   workgroup = Myworkgroup

   server string = Machinename Samba Server

This sets the workgroup name and the server string. You can assign the name of your workgroup and any server string you want to assign.

hosts allow = 192.168.1.

This is very important from the security point of view. You can set the hosts you want to allow here. In this example, all the hosts in the local area network with the IP addresses 192.168.1.* to access the Samba share.

security = user

In User Level Security, the client will send a session setup request directly following protocol negotiation. This request provides a username and password. The server can either accept or reject that username/password combination.

Under share definitions, you will see the following

[homes]
   comment = Home Directories
   browseable = no
   writable = yes

This allows, for example, user joe to access his home directory from a windows machine or a Samba client.

[tmp]
   comment = Temporary file space
   path = /tmp
   read only = no
   public = yes

This allows access to /tmp directory in your Fedora machine from a windows machine or a Samba client.

Here we will digress a little bit to see the difference between [homes] and [tmp]. The [homes] option allows the users to access their respective home directories in the Fedora box. They can only access their own directory and not any other user's directory. This is not of much help if people want to share files with one another. So [tmp] option allows all users to share files in /tmp directory.

Save the file smb.conf and exit the editor.