directory, name, and read/write permissions; and access users.
For even greater configurability, read through the editable configuration file at
/etc/samba/smb.conf. It is well commented and clear and explained
in greater detail later in this chapter.
To learn more about Samba, see https://www.samba.org. This section delves
into the basics of configuring Samba, and you should first read how to
manually configure Samba to get an understanding of how the software
works.
When you install Samba, it is a good idea to also install the samba-doc and
samba-doc-pdf packages because they contain extensive documentation
in text, PDF, and HTML formats. After you install Samba, you can find this
documentation in /usr/share/doc/samba*/doc. If you install Samba
using your Ubuntu disc, you can find a large amount of documentation in the
directory tree starting at /usr/share/doc/samba-doc or
/usr/share/doc/samba-doc-pdf. Altogether, almost 3MB of
documentation is included with the source code, in several formats, including
PDF, HTML, and text.
After installing Samba, you can either create the file
/etc/samba/smb.conf or use the smb.conf file supplied with Samba,
which is located by default under the /etc/samba directory with Ubuntu.
You can find nearly a dozen sample configuration files in the
/usr/share/doc/samba*/examples directory.
NOTE
Depending on your needs, smb.conf can be a simple file of fewer than 20
lines or a huge file spanning many pages of text. If your needs are complex,
I suggest that you browse through the Samba website at www.samba.org.Manually Configuring Samba with
/etc/samba/smb.conf
The /etc/samba/smb.conf file is broken into sections. Each section
provides a description of the resource that is to be shared (called a Samba
share or just a share) and should be titled appropriately. The three special
sections are as follows:
[global]—Establishes the global configuration settings (defined in
detail in the smb.conf man page and Samba documentation, found in
the /usr/share/doc /samba/docs directory)