Samba on Ubuntu: Configuring the Server IV: [homes]

The homes section of the Samba configuration file directs how Samba shares user directories across clients. As with the [globals] section, this section is similar to other configuration files in /etc, namely Apache's configuration file. For the basic syntax of the smb.conf file, see "Configuring the Server II".

The Basic Settings of [homes]

To understand the homes section, we strip out all the comments and start with a default configuration of the section. By default, file sharing is disabled in Samba so the file will look like this:

;[homes] ; comment = Home Directories ; browseable = no ; read only = yes ; create mask = 0700 ; directory mask = 0700 ; valid users = %S

To use any of these variables, we simply remove the leading semicolon (';'). Remember that if you uncomment any of the variables, you should also remove the semicolon before the section header, too. While the headers do not mean anything in the current version of Samba, there are plans for future versions of Samba to parse the configuration section headers.

This is the basic global configuration. Let's go through it line-by-line:

• comment: The homes section works much like any other non-global section of Samba's configuration. The comment tag is used to include a readable description of the purpose of this section.
• browseable: If left as 'no', users' directories will be able to be accessed specifically as '\\server\username', but users will not be able to access a master index of all available directories.
• read only: By default, directories should be read-only. Write permissions should be grantable but should not normally be allowed by default.
• create mask: The create mask setting indicates the permissions used when creating a file. For a file to be readable only by the creator, use 0700. If you want to share it with others, you need to use 0775. Note, however, that this grants others outside the group with read permissions to the file.
• directory mask: Like creat mask, above, the directory mask is set to 0700 by default. This allows the owner of the directory and no one else to have complete read-write-execute permissions. If you want to share the directories with the group on a read-write basis, use 0775 but note the universal readability of that mask.
• valid users: By default, any and all users can access a file share. By uncommenting this option, you tell Samba that only the user whose name the share carries is allowed to access the file share. That is, only 'user' can access '\\server\user', or, for an example, only user 'abcd' can access '\\mysambaserver\abcd'. All others will be denied access.

These represent the basics of the home section of smb.conf. If your goal is file sharing, you can work within these parameters to allow users to share files on your network. If, however, you also want to share printing, you can go on to the next section of the Samba configuration file, printers.

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