Installing Samba from the command line

Proven on:

11 (bullseye)

Basic Samba install & minimal configuration

Create a test folder & file to be shared.

(Assuming you'll replace USER with your own username...)

• mkdir ~/share
• touch ~/share/Foo

Install Samba

• sudo apt install samba -y

Configure the test share

• sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

As a publicly accessible share

[New_share]
    comment= my share
    path = /home/USER/share
    force create mode = 0660        ; readable and writable by user and group
    force directory mode = 0770     ; readable, writable and searchable by user and group
    browseable  = yes
    Read only = no
    guest  ok = yes

Note: Files & folders placed in this share by an anonymous user will belong to nobody:nogroup.

oddly, even as the owner of the share, you won't have direct control over these files/folders.

So, it might be a good idea to add yourself to the nogroup group:

• sudo usermod -a -G nogroup USER

As a share requiring authentication

[New_share]
    comment= my share
    path = /home/USER/share
    browseable  = yes
    Read only = no
    guest  ok = no

Restart Samba

While you're in there, if you don't have printer(s) connected to the machine, comment out or remove the [printers] and [print$] blocks

• sudo systemctl restart smbd

Set up usernames & passwords for Samba acess

(Samba uses it's own password list.  Therefore, you'll need to set up each user...)

For each user that will be allowed access (USERs must exist as users on the system),

• sudo smbpasswd -a USER

Additional bits to install

Client & utils & such... (optional)

• sudo apt install cifs-utils samba-client -y

Usage Notes

NOTE: At this point, the share can be accessed, but you need to know where it is because Samba does not advertise it's presence.

You can see the shares from the machine by entering smb://MACHINENAME/ into the address bar of your file browser.