Archive:Samba

Note: The term "samba" is often used interchangeably with "SMB" (aka, Windows File Sharing). You may be looking for that page instead.

Samba the Linux and Unix implementation SMB/CIFS (aka, Windows File Sharing). If it is not included in a given OS distro, it can be installed easily to share files to XBMC (among other uses). Samba/SMB is often a good choice due to it being highly compatible with other computers, regardless of the OS.

• http://www.samba.org

Installing

Gentoo

emerge samba

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install samba

Compile from source

Installing Samba regardless of distro

1. wget http://us4.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba-latest.tar.gz
2. tar -xvf samba-latest.tar.gz
3. cd samba-{version} (At this time its samba-3.0.22)
4. ./configure
5. make install

Configuring

Note: The example below is for a public share.

Samba's configuration is stored /etc/samba/smb.conf. All the following items should be placed in that file.

• Global configuration

[global]
workgroup = <workgroup>
netbios name = <name of server>
server string = <title>
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
map to guest = bad user
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
local master = no
dns proxy = no

workgroup

Should be set to the workgroup your home pc uses if you planning on accessing this share from a windows PC

netbios name

This is the name that will be displayed when browsing the your Network Neighborhood

server string

The title of the server that will be displayed in windows(This is not the share name)

• Share configuration

[public]
path = <dir to share>
public = yes
only guest = yes
writable = yes

path

Set this to the path to be shared by samba

Run testparm to check your smb.conf for internal correctness.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X from v10.5 and below also came with Samba for SMB file sharing, but later switched to a different implementation of SMB for v10.6. This change can cause issues for sharing files from Mac OS computers to XBMC, but can be fixed by using SMBUp, which reinstalls Samba and disables Apple's SMB server.

See also

• SMB
• File sharing