Setting up samba with password protection

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 in Networking, Samba, Windows by admin

To easily share your files to linux and windows clients, samba is still the preferred choice. In this guide I will show how to setup a samba server on centos 5 machine, that can be accessed only by certain people protected by password.

Related Reading: How to setup a Samba Server

  1. Install samba on the server
    • # yum install samba OR
    • #zypper in samba OR
    • #apt-get install samba
  2. Create the group that all the samba users will be contained in, for example ’samba’
    • # groupadd samba
  3. Create samba users and add it to the above group, which is in this example is ’samba’. Below is the example to create a user named ‘user1′ and add it to group ’samba’. Set the password for user1
    • # useradd user1 -g samba
    • # passwd user1
  4. Create the directory to be shared. In this example, i will use /home/shared. Change the ownership to root and group ownership to the ’samba’ group. Change permission so that only user and group can read write and execute
    • # mkdir /home/shared
    • # chown -R root.samba /home/shared
    • # chmod -R 775 /home/shared
  5. Below is a simple setting of samba
    • [global] workgroup = samba
      server string = Samba Server
      security = user [shared_folder]
      comment = Sharing place
      path = /home/shared
      public = no
      writable = yes
      printable = no
      write list = @samba
      create mask = 0755
      force create mode = 0755
      directory mask = 0775
      force directory mode = 0775
    • What the above setting does basically is to setup /home/shared as samba shared directory but can only be accessed by user from group samba
  6. Add user/users to samba
    • # smbpasswd -a user1
  7. Start smb service, restart if it has already been started
    • # /etc/init.d/smb start
  8. ‘user1′ can now access the samba server using address ‘smb://samba_server_ip_address/shared_folder‘ at any nautilus address bar. For windows client, you can see at your ‘My Network Places’ and find a workgroup named ’samba’

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