Creating a Samba drive in Linux

Creating a Samba drive on Linux has several advantages.

1. It is cross-platform

Well, that’s it.

It has its issues though, like the recent randomeware attack WannaCry was based on an exploit «EternalBlue» which was present in Samba. However, if we can overlook it, we can create an easy file sharing system.

Now let us see how to create a Samba drive

Steps to take

• Install Samba

  sudo apt-get install samba
  

• Create user for Samba

  I’ve decided to name the Samba user smb_user

  useradd smb_user
  

  Note : It is advisable to not add a sudo user as a samba user. Otherwise, you will lose sudo permission.

• Create a directory to be shared

  mkdir /smb_drive
  chmod 770 /smb_drive
  

• Create group for Samba

  The name of the group is WORKGROUP simply because of Windows traditions :)

  groupadd WORKGROUP
  chown :WORKGROUP /smb_drive
  

• Add user to Samba group

  smbpasswd -a smb_user
  usermod -G WORKGROUP smb_user
  

• Edit the file /etc/samba/smb.conf. Add the following at the end of the file. Try to understand the following on your own.

  [achilles]
      comment = Linux Samba Share
      path = /smb_drive
      browsable = yes
      guest ok = yes
      read only = yes
      create mask = 0755
  

• Restart Samba service

  sudo systemctl restart smbd.service nmbd.service
  

That’s it, you’re done!

If you want to access the server from a Linux machine, go to your file browser and enter the URL smb://<ip address>

On Windows machine, it should be \\<ip address>