Samba smb.conf setup issues

Hi all,

I’ve been trying to get samba setup in a sensible way for my home use. Security is not a huge concern so I can relax a little on some setup methods but of course it’s better to be secure than not.

What I am trying to do is pretty simple, I just want a normal user to be able to log on and added files etc. as this is our mass storage computer.

This computer is setup with two RAIDs. The first RAID are SSDs and cover almost the entire file system. The 2nd RAID is exclusively on the /srv/ path and is my mass storage area (RAID5 3 x 4TBs).

For my own use as this is my workstation (which we are doubling up as a media server) I just create symlinks from my home directory to a place under the /srv/ directory whenever I have something large that I want to store which of course is never problem when working on the computer directly. E.g. a typical link will look like this

~/Libraries -> /srv/extended_home/hilary/Libraries/

.
In all cases I described below I have been testing by logging in as the user “hilary” from an apple computer (obviously I’ll want it to work logging in from Windows computers as well). Hilary and I both have Linux profiles on the server and entries in the Samba user database (TDB). My server is Leap 43.3 with all the latest updates.

Since security isn’t a big issue I opted for a simple solution of enabling wide links so I added the lines that you see now commented below.

[global]
        workgroup = WORKGROUP
        passdb backend = tdbsam
        printing = cups
        printcap name = cups
        printcap cache time = 750
        cups options = raw
        map to guest = Bad User
        include = /etc/samba/dhcp.conf
        logon path = \\%L\profiles\.msprofile
        logon home = \\%L\%U\.9xprofile
        logon drive = P:
        usershare allow guests = No
        wins support = No
        ldap admin dn =
        usershare max shares = 100
        wins server =
#        allow insecure wide links = Yes       
[homes]
        comment = Home Directories
        valid users = %S, %D%w%S
        browseable = No
        read only = No
        inherit acls = Yes
#        wide links = Yes                      
#        follow symlinks = Yes                 

The problem with this is that while it allowed me to follow a link once I added these lines I could not see anything in the directory once I followed it. I played with this a bit but couldn’t resolve that.

Deciding to take another tack I commented out the lines so they are as you see them now and then added the following section:

[hilary]
        comment = %U Mass Storage
        path = /srv/extended_home/hilary
        valid users = %S, %D%w%S
        browseable = No
        read only = No
        inherit acls = Yes

This worked and now the user hilary could get to their mass storage area but it’s rather inefficient so I changed

path = /srv/extended_home/hilary

to

path = /srv/extended_home/%u

(I tried with both a capital and lower case %u) and it stopped working.

More curious, if I leave

path = /srv/extended_home/hilary

as is but change

[hilary]

to

[mass_storage]

logging in as hilary stops working as well in that I don’t see the directory anymore, I can still log in.

At this point I’m kind of stuck to make this work efficiently. Of course I could just put two shares in, one for hilary and one for me as we are the only two using it at the moment but I don’t like things not working as they seem like they should and I really should be able to make this work with either a mass_storage share or the use of wide links instead of adding a share per user.

Here is the smb.conf file in full as it is:

[global]
        workgroup = WORKGROUP
        passdb backend = tdbsam
        printing = cups
        printcap name = cups
        printcap cache time = 750
        cups options = raw
        map to guest = Bad User
        include = /etc/samba/dhcp.conf
        logon path = \\%L\profiles\.msprofile
        logon home = \\%L\%U\.9xprofile
        logon drive = P:
        usershare allow guests = No
        wins support = No
        ldap admin dn =
        usershare max shares = 100
        wins server =
#        allow insecure wide links = Yes       
[homes]
        comment = Home Directories
        valid users = %S, %D%w%S
        browseable = No
        read only = No
        inherit acls = Yes
#        wide links = Yes                      
#        follow symlinks = Yes                 
[profiles]
        comment = Network Profiles Service
        path = %H
        read only = No
        store dos attributes = Yes
        create mask = 0600
        directory mask = 0700
[users]
        comment = All users
        path = /home
        read only = No
        inherit acls = Yes
        veto files = /aquota.user/groups/shares/
[groups]
        comment = All groups
        path = /home/groups
        read only = No
        inherit acls = Yes
[printers]
        comment = All Printers
        path = /var/tmp
        printable = Yes
        create mask = 0600
        browseable = No
[print$]
        comment = Printer Drivers
        path = /var/lib/samba/drivers
        write list = @ntadmin root
        force group = ntadmin
        create mask = 0664
        directory mask = 0775
#[mass_storage]                                
[hilary]
        comment = %U Mass Storage
        path = /srv/extended_home/hilary
#       path = /srv/extended_home/%u           
        valid users = %S, %D%w%S
        browseable = No
        read only = No
        inherit acls = Yes

Anyone who knows what’s going on, your help will be appreciated.

If they aren’t browseable, how are you going to browse what’s in the directory(ies)?

Browsable seems to only affect whether it can be seen when you are not logged in. Once logged in, as long as you have permissions, you can browse away.