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Samba file sharing

Samba is the standard Windows interoperability suite of programs for Linux and Unix. Among other things, it allows Linux, macOS and Windows users to share files via the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.

Samba on Solus​

To enable convenient file-sharing on Solus, we maintain a Solus-specific Samba configuration that out-of-the-box:

  • Supports Samba usershare functionality
  • Enables sharing of $HOME folders (manual user account activation needed)
  • Is set up as a standalone server using the SMB2.0.2 protocol and up (>= Windows Vista/Server 2008)
  • Advertises itself via Avahi aka Apple Bonjour / mDNS / zeroconf for macOS compatibility
  • Advertises itself via wsdd aka Web Services Discovery Daemon for Windows 7+ compatibility
  • Disables sharing of printers via Samba (use IPP via CUPS instead)
  • Allows access only from IPv4 and IPv6 private and link-local (non-internet-routable) addresses

As of Samba 4.7.x, Solus disables the old, deprecated and insecure original SMB1/CIFS protocol by default.

For more information on this choice, please read this post regarding SMB1.

As of Samba 4.11.x, the SMB1/CIFS protocol is officially deprecated upstream.

How to start/stop Samba​

Please note that Samba does NOT run on system boot by default. It needs to be manually started/configured to start automatically:

# Start Samba manually
sudo systemctl start smb

# Configure Samba to start automatically on each boot and immediately start the service
sudo systemctl enable --now smb

# Check whether Samba is running
sudo systemctl status smb

# Restart Samba manually
sudo systemctl restart smb

# Stop Samba manually
sudo systemctl stop smb

# Configure Samba to not start automatically on each boot and immediately stop the service
sudo systemctl disable --now smb

Enabling Windows 7+ network discovery support​

The Web Services Discovery protocol is used by Windows 7+ clients to discover shares on other computers. Solus now includes the wsdd service which provides support for the Web Services Discovery protocol.

When restarting wsdd, it may be necessary to also restart Samba.

# Start wsdd manually (depends on the smb service)
sudo systemctl start wsdd

# Configure wsdd to start automatically on each boot and immediately start the service
sudo systemctl enable --now wsdd

# Check whether wsdd is running
sudo systemctl status wsdd

# Restart wsdd and Samba
sudo systemctl restart wsdd smb

# Stop wsdd manually
sudo systemctl stop wsdd

# Configure wsdd to not start automatically on each boot and immediately stop the service
sudo systemctl disable --now wsdd

For more details on managing services on Solus with systemctl, see man systemctl which is part of the systemd system and service manager.

Accessing Samba via IPv6​

In order to access a running Solus Samba server instance via IPv6, first verify that all relevant hosts (including the Samba host) are configured with an IPv6 link-local address.

This can be verified in a terminal:

$ ip addr

2: enp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 14:da:e9:10:f9:c7 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.147.233/24 brd 192.168.147.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute enp2s0
       valid_lft 5066sec preferred_lft 5066sec
    inet6 fe80::d555:a50f:1aea:c944/64 scope link noprefixroute
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

In the above example, the name of the relevant network device is enp2s0. Note how the line starting with inet6 contains an IPv6 address which begins with fe80:: and contains scope link.

Ensure that Samba has been started on the host and then query the running local Samba instance with the following command, using the IPv6 address and interface as show by the output of ip addr:

$ smbclient -N -L //fe80::d555:a50f:1aea:c944%enp2s0

The output might look something like this:

Unable to initialize messaging context
Anonymous login successful

        Sharename       Type      Comment
        ---------       ----      -------
        eopkgs          Disk
        IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (Samba server (version: 4.10.11, protocol: SMB3_11))
        Public          Disk
fe80::d555:a50f:1aea:c944%enp2s0 is an IPv6 address -- no workgroup available

Make sure to change the IPv6 address and interface name (fe80::d555:a50f:1aea:c944 and enp2s0 respectively in the above example) to the real address and interface name of the Samba host in question.

A brief introduction to the Samba usershare functionality​

In order to support user-managed (as opposed to system-managed) shares, Samba provides the so-called usershare functionality, where users can define network shares without touching the traditional Samba configuration file.

GUI - configuring shares via file manager plugins​

The default Solus configuration was written with the nemo-share (Budgie and XFCE), nautilus-share (GNOME), and kdenetwork-filesharing (Plasma) file manager plugins in mind. These plugins allow the user to share folders in an easy and convenient way.

All you need to do is to install either the caja-extensions package (which includes the caja-share plugin), the kdenetwork-filesharing package, the nautilus-share package or the nemo-share package from the Software Center and enable the relevant Samba services.

# Budgie
sudo eopkg install nemo-share

#GNOME
sudo eopkg install nautilus-share

# Plasma
sudo eopkg install kdenetwork-filesharing

# XFCE
sudo eopkg install nemo-share

In order to load the newly installed file manager plugin, you will need to log out of the current desktop session and log back in to a new desktop session, at which point the plugin in question will be ready for use.

Afterwards, simply right-clicking a folder and clicking properties will now show an option to share it, as well as whether to allow Read/Write permissions to your users or guest access.

CLI - using the net usershare command​

Excerpt from the man smb.conf manual page:

net usershare add sharename path [comment] [acl] [guest_ok=[y|n]]
    To create or modify (overwrite) a user defined share.

net usershare delete sharename
    To delete a user defined share.

net usershare list wildcard-sharename
    To list user defined shares.

net usershare info wildcard-sharename
    To print information about user defined shares.

Managing Samba authentication for named users​

Should the user some_user wish to access e.g. the $HOME directory via Samba, it is necessary to enable the some_user Samba account.

Note that the some_user Samba account is separate from the some_user Linux user account, but they share the same $HOME directory.

# Add the some_user account to the Samba login db
sudo smbpasswd -a some_user

# Enable the some_user account in the Samba login db
sudo smbpasswd -e some_user

# Try to log in to a running Samba instance as some_user and list shares
smbclient -U some_user -L localhost

# Disable the some_user account in the Samba login db
sudo smbpasswd -d some_user

# Remove the some_user account from the Samba login db
sudo smbpasswd -x some_user

See man smbpasswd for more details.

Debugging Samba authentication issues​

To help debug authentication issues, the Solus Samba configuration is by default set up with relatively verbose logging when it comes to authentication and protocol negotiation.

The Samba log files live in the /var/log/samba/ directory.

Adding custom configuration parameters via /etc/samba/smb.conf​

CAUTION: From this point on, it is assumed that the user is familiar with the Samba documentation, including man smb.conf, and that the user has a basic understanding of Linux filesystem permissions.

The default Solus-managed configuration (which lives in /usr/share/defaults/samba/smb.conf and will be overwritten on each Samba package update) is written such that it will attempt to include any configuration parameters present in /etc/samba/smb.conf.

Hence, any persistent user-managed parameters should be added to /etc/samba/smb.conf which will never be overwritten by the system package manager.

In addition, the Solus-controlled Samba configuration is written such that it is possible to override its default parameters simply by assigning a new value to the parameter in question in /etc/samba/smb.conf. From a technical perspective, any parameters added without a [shared resource] header will considered part of the [global] configuration section.

This way, simply deleting or renaming /etc/samba/smb.conf and restarting Samba with sudo systemctl restart smb will reset the configuration to the known working default Solus configuration.

Example -- anonymous, read-write share outside of $HOME​

# Contents of /etc/samba/smb.conf:
#
# If /etc/samba/smb.conf exists, it is automatically loaded by the Solus-
# controlled default config residing in /usr/share/defaults/samba/smb.conf
#
# The following configuration creates a "//servername/someshare" share where
# anonymous users have read and write access.
#
# ';' also denotes a comment (typically used for configuration parameters)
#
[someshare]
path = /mnt/someshare
# allow anonymous access
guest ok = Yes
# ONLY allow anonymous access (don't allow both guest and system user access)
;guest only = Yes
# allow write access
read only = No
# This is an example of how to limit access to the share to known IPs
;hosts deny = ALL
;hosts allow = 127.0.0.1 192.168.1.0/24
# share config end

In the above example, it is assumed that the user has chosen a suitable method for making /mnt/someshare writeable by guest users.

After adding a [someshare] section like in the above example, run sudo testparm to check that the newly included share does not contain syntax errors. Check out man testparm for more information about the testparm utility.

If testparm didn't spot any problems, restart Samba with sudo systemctl restart smb, which will activate the new configuration.

Apart from the aforementioned man smb.conf, wiki.samba.org is your friend, specifically:

The default Solus Samba configuration is patterned on the above.

Full manual control of Samba can be achieved by completely bypassing the default Solus Samba configuration.

In the smbd manual page (man 8 smbd), it is shown how the compiled-in default config file can be overridden by specifying the --configfile=<somepath> flag during startup.

To use the traditional /etc/samba/smb.conf configuration file exclusively (thus bypassing the Solus configuration), edit the /etc/sysconfig/samba file to look like so:

## Path:           Network/Samba
## Description:    Samba process options
## Type:           string
## Default:        ""
## ServiceRestart: samba
SAMBAOPTIONS=""
## Type:           string
## Default:        ""
## ServiceRestart: smb
SMBDOPTIONS="--configfile=/etc/samba/smb.conf"
## Type:           string
## Default:        ""
## ServiceRestart: nmb
NMBDOPTIONS="--configfile=/etc/samba/smb.conf"
## Type:           string
## Default:        ""
## ServiceRestart: winbind
WINBINDOPTIONS=""