bare minimum samba share on Centos 8

Posted on February 17, 2020  •  3 minutes  • 440 words  •  Suggest Changes

This is a quick guide on how I got a simple samba (4.10.x) share to work on Centos 8.1.1911 (Core) and Windows 10 Enterprise (1903). By god this should not be so hard, but it f*cking is.

Generic setup

Install samba :

yum install samba

edit /etc/samba/smb.conf

change the workgroup, netbios name and security, add log file and log level:

[global]
        workgroup = SERVERWORKGROUP
        netbios name = server
        security = user

        log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
        log level = 1

Create user & share

Create a user :

useradd machine

optional, if only used for samba, you can not get them a /home directory and no shell using :

useradd -M -s /sbin/nologin machine

In order to enable the user, they require a password, however this won’t be used (unless if you gave them normal user shell & home dir)

passwd machine

Give them a samba password (used to authenticate) :

smbpasswd -a machine

Should give :

[root@server ~]# smbpasswd -a machine
New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:
tdbsam_open: Converting version 0.0 database to version 4.0.
tdbsam_convert_backup: updated /var/lib/samba/private/passdb.tdb file.
Added user machine.

Enable the user :

smbpasswd -e machine

Now once we done that, its time to create the share folder :

Create the share path :

mkdir /server/upload/machine

Give the new user permissions :

chown machine.machine /server/upload/machine

then add the share in the configuration; (smb.conf)

Add :

[nextseq]
        path = /server/upload/machine
        read only = no

now for the full smb.conf : test it !

testparm

[root@server upload]# testparm
Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf
Loaded services file OK.
Server role: ROLE_STANDALONE

Press enter to see a dump of your service definitions

# Global parameters
[global]
        log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
        security = USER
        workgroup = MACHINEWORKGROUP
        idmap config * : backend = tdb


[machine]
        path = /server/upload/machine
        read only = No

Firewall

Whether you use iptables or firewalld; you need to open some ports for samba :

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

Start Service

Then we should be able to start the service and connect windows to it :

service smb start

note : I did not start nmb or winbind;

A happy ending for samba after all;

$ yum info samba
Last metadata expiration check: 0:26:43 ago on Mon 17 Feb 2020 03:52:39 PM CET.
Installed Packages
Name         : samba
Version      : 4.10.4
Release      : 101.el8_1
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 2.4 M
Source       : samba-4.10.4-101.el8_1.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : BaseOS
Summary      : Server and Client software to interoperate with Windows machines
URL          : http://www.samba.org/
License      : GPLv3+ and LGPLv3+
Description  : Samba is the standard Windows interoperability suite of programs for Linux
             : and Unix.