IT 302
LINUX ADMIN PROJECT I chose to do my final project on the Samba server, such as how to set up the server, security, and maintenance. Samba “is an Open Source/Free Software suite that provides seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS clients. Samba is freely available, unlike other SMB/CIFS implementations, and allows for interoperability between Linux/Unix servers and Windows-based clients.” (source1) The whole purpose of the samba software is to make it possible to operate on many platforms. To install the server you would use the yum command in terminal. You then would enter su for the “super user” to install files as root. Then create a new directory containing three empty files which you'll share. While logged on as root create the new directory “/smbdemo” using this command “mkdir /smbdemo”. Then you would change permissions on the new directory to 770 with the following command “chmod 770 /smbdemo”. Now you navigate to the new directory with “cd /smbdemo” for the command. Add three empty files to the directory with the following command “touch file1 file2 file3”. Next step one would most likely add a user to the server. You do this first by “adding users to the Samba database in order for them to have access to their home directory and other Samba shares.”(source2) Using this command “smbpasswd -a ” you will then be able to add a new samba user. The user must be an existing Linux user or else the command will fail. Then if you “perform the following steps to create a smbusers group, change ownership of the /smbdemo directory, and add a user to the smbusers group by doing these commands in order as follows: “groupadd smbusers” then “chown :smbusers /smbdemo” “usermod -G smbusers don”.(source2) Next I will talk about how to configure the server. “Samba configuration is done in the file /etc/samba/smb.conf. There are two parts to /etc/samba/smb.conf. One being “Global Settings” This is where you configure the server. You’ll find things like authentication method, listening ports, interfaces, workgroup names, server names, log file settings, and similar parameters.” Second being “Share Definitions” This is where you configure each of the shares for the users. By default, there’s a printer share already configured.” In the Global Settings section, at a particular line, depending on which platform you use, you change the workgroup name to your workgroup name. Now, confirm that the authentication type is set to the user by going to the authentication section, while in Global Settings. Again depending on the platform at a specific line make sure there is no hash mark at the beginning of the line to enable user security. “Samba is extremely robust. Once you've got everything set up the way you want, you'll probably forget that it is running. When trouble occurs, it's typically during installation or when you're trying to add something new to the server. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of resources that you can use to diagnose these troubles. Sometimes Unix seems to be made up of a handful of applications and tools. There are tools to troubleshoot tools. And of course, there are several ways to accomplish the same task.”(source3) When trying to solve a problem in Samba, you may want to start with these tools: Samba Logs, Fault tree, Unix utilities, samba test utilities, documentation and FAQ’s, searchable archives, and samba newsgroups. Your best bet as a first step at troubleshooting should always be to check the log files. The Samba log files can help diagnose majority of the problems that Samba administrators are likely to face. Samba is quite flexible when it comes to logging. “You can set up the server to log as little or as much as you want. Substitution variables that allow you to isolate individual logs for each machine, share, or combination thereof.”(source3) “By default, logs are placed in samba_directory /var/smbd.log and samba_directory /var/nmbd.log, where samba_directory is the location where Samba was installed (typically, /usr/local/samba).”(source3)