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Introduction
Sharing files and printers with Windows machines is something that sooner or later you will have to do. If you are using Linux as you only operating system, you really a great chance to have to share something with the windows universe, unfortunately they are more than us.
But do not worry Samba is here to save you.
We will see here a simple yet effective samba configuration file, that will give you a good idea about how it works, and how you can share files and printers between Linux and Windows.
Install Samba
Well, use you package manager to do it, I will show how to do it in Debian and Arch Linux, just as an example.
aptitude install samba
For Debian, and:
pacman -S samba
For Arch Linux, I’m sure you will how to do it for your Linux distribution.
Samba configuration file
You may find it at: /etc/samba/smb.conf
if not look for it with:
find / -name smb.conf
Here is how mine looks:
[global] workgroup = MYGROUP server string = Samba Server security = share hosts allow = 10.1.1. 127. load printers = yes log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log max log size = 50 #============================ Share Definitions ============================== [homes] comment = Home Directories browseable = no writable = yes [printers] comment = All Printers path = /var/spool/samba browseable = yes # Set public = yes to allow user 'guest account' to print guest ok = yes writable = no printable = yes create mode=0700 # write list=@adm root neocephas printer admin = root [HP_LaserJet_P1006] comment = HP LaserJet P1006 printable = yes path = /var/spool/samba public = yes guest ok = yes printer admin = root
Well, this file, is just a simple example, but it will work for most of the cases.
If you already have a workgroup, change MYGROUP for your own workgroup.
host allow lets you define which networks will have access to shares, in my case, my office uses 10.1.1.0/255, yours can be different.
You can see, I am sharing an HP LaserJet P1006, which is installed on my PC and managed via CUPS.
One important thing I have changed from the default configuration file is:
In the global section, security from user to share, this let every user to print on my printer with no need to use a user and password, yes, you are right, it is not as secure as using user and create pairs of users/passwords, but I do not need that in my office, and I like to keep things simple.
If you prefer to use more security, you will have to keep
security = user
In the global section, and use
smbpasswd -a [user]
To create users/password for the samba server, those users, should exist on the system so you will have to add them with useradd