Installing Samba on Ubuntu Server

Previously I had installed Samba via the Ubuntu desktop, but now I wanted to do it on Ubuntu server.

First, I installed samba:

apt-get install samba

At the end of the install on my VMWare host system, I got the warning below:

--------- IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR XINETD USERS ----------
The following line will be added to your /etc/inetd.conf file:

## netbios-ssn     stream  tcp     nowait  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd  /usr/sbin/smbd

If you are indeed using xinetd, you will have to convert the
above into /etc/xinetd.conf format, and add it manually. See
/usr/share/doc/xinetd/README.Debian for more information.
-----------------------------------------------------------

I didn't end up having to do anything special, but wanted to mention it anyways.

Next, I edited /etc/samba/smb.conf to look like the one below. (You'll want to replace "username" with an actual username or list of usernames.)

 
[global]
   workgroup = WORKGROUP
   server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu)
# This will prevent nmbd to search for NetBIOS names through DNS.
   dns proxy = no

# This tells Samba to use a separate log file for each machine
# that connects
   log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m

# Cap the size of the individual log files (in KiB).
   max log size = 1000

# Do something sensible when Samba crashes: mail the admin a backtrace
   panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d

# "security = user" is always a good idea. This will require a Unix account
# in this server for every user accessing the server.
   security = user
   encrypt passwords = true
   passdb backend = tdbsam
   obey pam restrictions = yes
   invalid users = root
# This option controls how nsuccessful authentication attempts are mapped 
# to anonymous connections
   map to guest = bad user
   socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

[tmp]
   comment = tmp
   path = /tmp
   valid users = username
   writable = yes
   create mask = 0644
   directory mask = 0755

You can validate your smb.conf file by running 'testparm', e.g:

# testparm -s
Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf
Processing section "[music]"
Loaded services file OK.
...

Restart Samba:

# /etc/init.d/samba reload
* Reloading /etc/samba/smb.conf smbd only
...done.

Add samba users via smbpassword:

smbpasswd -a username

That's it.

BTW, one tidbit, if you get "Error code -6602" on the client, this is caused by a non-existent path in /etc/samba/smb.conf.