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Samba Windows File Sharing

Introduction

If you have ever dealt with Windows systems chances are you are aware of SMB (Server Message Block) for file sharing. If you are a seasoned Linux administrator chances are that you have heard of Samba but if you have not, Samba is the de facto open-source implementation of SMB to enable file sharing and Active Directory access from Linux machines to Windows networks.

Installation

You need to install Samba using dnf:

dnf install -y samba

Setting up a share

First make a directory you want to share with Windows clients:

mkdir /var/store

Next set the SELinux labels on the /var/store directory:

semanage fcontext -a -t samba_share_t  "/var/store(/.*)?"
restorecon -Rv /var/store

Replace /var/store with the directory to be shared.

Now configure Samba:

vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

In the smb.conf file navigate to the bottom and insert the following:

[Share]
        path = /var/store
        browseable = yes
        writable = no
        read only = yes
        guest ok = yes

If you are unaware of the options above, they are:

  • path is the directory we are sharing. Set this to your respective directory (/var/store in our case).
  • browseable is to allow clients to browsing access. If you want to disallow browsing set this to no.
  • writable is to allow clients writing access. If you want to allow write access set this to yes.
  • read only is to mark the share as read-only. If you want to allow write or execute access set this to no.
  • guest ok is to allow non-authenticated users access to our share. If you want to deny guests set this to no.

To test the configuration you can run:

testparm

Enabling Samba

Once the configuration tests OK, open the Samba port in firewall-cmd:

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

Next, you can enable Samba:

systemctl enable --now smb nmb

Accessing the Samba share

You can access the Samba share using the following URI (Note: replace SERVER_IP with the IP address or FQDN of your machine running Samba):

  • Windows: \\SERVER_IP
  • Linux or Mac: smb://SERVER_IP

SERVER_IP on the author's home network is 172.20.0.100 so while the instructions vary based on operating system, the author will access the new share from their Fedora 40 notebook:

Fedora 40 Nautilus showing our Samba Share

All files accessible on the server are also available on client machines.

Conclusion

While SMB has a reputation of being Microsoft-centric, SMB is actually an industry standard and your Samba share can be accessed from Linux, Mac, BSD and even mobile devices. So congratulations, you are sharing your server's files now!

Author: Neel Chauhan

Contributors: Steven Spencer