Samba

Instructions to install and use Samba with Armadeus

Introduction

Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that has, since 1992, provided file and print services to all manner of SMB/CIFS clients, including the numerous versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems

This page will summarize the process to build, install basic samba services such as

• Mounting windows shares
• Sharing folders for Windows computers

Kernel configuration

First, you must have a right kernel configuration to enable the usage of SAMBA :

• You must have a networking support (trivial).......
• "File systems->Network File Systems->SMB file system support" is enabled
• "File systems->Network File Systems->SMB file system->Use a default NLS" is enabled
  • "withs Default Remote NLS Option = cp437"
• "File systems->Network File Systems->CIFS support" is enabled
• "File systems->Network File Systems->Native Language Support"
  • Codepage 437 (United States, Canada)
  • Codepage 850 (Europe)
  • NLS ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1; Western European Languages)
  • NLS ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1; Western European Languages) (this is optional)

Note that in some cases NLS default cp437 can be changed in samba configuration.

Mounting a windows share

To do this you must have the smbmount command. Enable samba package and the smbmount command into your buildroot configuration. Additionally the util-linux package is necessary: you must enable it into your buildroot configuration too. After that, you can mount a windows share by using the following command:

smbmount //hostname/SMBshare /mnt/smb -o username=freddys,password=fredspass

Or by using the ip address

smbmount //192.168.1.2/SMBshare /mnt/win -o username=freddys,password=fredspass

Sharing folders

To share folders for windows, you must enable the nmbd & smbd services into your buildroot configuration. Optionally you may install the /etc/init.d start script. The basic samba configuration file is located at /etc/samba/smb.conf. Browse it and you will see that a basic configuration is available. The /tmp and /home/default folders are exported for the default user (no password) and therefore you can mount them by using the smbmount command on your Linux PC as before:

smbmount //APF9328/tmp /mnt/apf -o username=default,password=

From a Windows computer, use the explorer and search for the apf9328 computer. Logon with user default, no password.

Note that you can logon as guest and that default is the default account for guests.

For a custom configuration , edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. You will find all the informations about samba configurations on the Samba web page or by using the man page for smb.conf.

The smbpasswd command

This command can be installed for conveniance. Because his big size , you may remove it after usage. A user default without password is defined into our standart installation. You may change this by using the smbpasswd command (see man page).

Typical issues

• smbmount errors :

Because smbmount is using the mount command, make shure you are not using the mount command of the busybox! --> enable package "util-linux" in your buildroot configuration and install the new file system

• mount does not complete or Input/output errors:
  • Verify that /etc/mtab is not a symbolic link to /proc/mounts. If it is, erase /etc/mtab and reboot. Linux will create a correct /etc/mtab
  • Are you shure that your mount point has correct access rights?

Links

The complete (and very big!!) documentation can be found here:

• http://www.samba.org/