Comments on Samba Server Installation and Configuration on CentOS 7

This got me up and running, thank you so much!

shouldn't "mv /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak" actually be cp instead of mv?

"mv" will move the file to a backup and let us start clean when issuing 'vi /etc/samba/smb.conf'

I find it really convenient this way, so we don't get distracted with the ZILLION comments out there in the default conf.

Good job , thanks. where did you get the global option map to guest = bad user ?

Best manual I found when using Windows 7 clients. Thanks Srijan Kishore

Should be on Google top list for Samba centos setup. 

 Thank You

Very good article Srijan, very clear information. The best guide I have seen. Others are either too long winded or miss some steps.

Thank you !! It's perfect !

I tried to find something related to Centos 7 + Samba 4 as PDC in the forums but couldn't find any post!

Anyone did the setup sucessfully and could share the way it was done?

Thank you,

I think this was recently added and well written

https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/samba-4-domain-controller-installation-on-centos/

thanks,

configure Samba on Rhel/CentOS 7 with Active dirctory

A truly excellent guide. Worked like a charm. Thankyou!!!

My dir had files, so I had to use the

"chcon -t samba_share_t anonymous/"

with "-R":

chcon -t samba_share_t -R anonymous/

to get it working.

That did the trick!

Thanks!!!

When will RHEL 7 and CentOS 7 update Samba from 4.1.1 to the current version? I really want to use this distribution without having to manually build the soure. I need at least 4.1.12 as shipped in Fedora 21 as it fixes this bug.

Thanks a lot for the tutorial

Don't forget "-R" for chcon if some folders are already present in the samba folder

Just one thing: When doing this for an existing user, make sure the user is added to the group used - smbgrp in this tutorial. In my case I was getting an error and didn't realize that the error was affecting also the user to be added to the group and couldn't authenticate.

Only after edited the group and added the user to it I was able to authelticate.

No changes in windows 7 required. This tutorial works like a charm and I'd like to thanks Srijan for it!

I think he meant the other way around. 777 for public and 755 for secured.

chmod -R 0755 anonymous/                ->  chmod -R 0777 anonymous/chown -R nobody:nobody anonymous/

if leave it like this user won't be able to create files because it doesn't below to nobody group.

###

chmod -R 0777 secured/             -> chmod -R 0755 secured/chcon -t samba_share_t secured/

you don't need 777 permission when you have a group of valid users.

Yes, it's right!

Thank you so much!!

I followed the procedure and I get a not accessible for the secured folder. What seems to be the problem here?

@PJ I had this same issue - anonymous folder worked fine, but secured folder was giving not accessible error - until I joined my Windows client to the same workgroup that was named in the samba config file.

I have same problem but I can not join win computer to same workgroup, like Samba, because my win is AD domain member.

What shoud I do?

Very NICE :)

Best manual for this app thanks alot 

I can't get the secured part working. I have followed the instructions carefully but i can't authenticate with username and password from my Windows 7 professional. Anonymous works great but when i try using username and password i get service unavailable. You may not have permission to use this network resource.

Can anyone tell me what to do?

I get (from Kubuntu to CentOS) :

Could not connect to host for smb://

Thanks for your tutorial! I've made it several times.

I suggest adding -R to the SELinux configuration:

chcon -R -t samba_share_t anonymous/

for a shared folder with subdirectories.

Don't use chcon. After a SELinux relabel your settings will be wiped. Use semanage fcontext and restorecon -R 

Very good article , very clear, the best guide I have seen. 

Werry good :D

tho i have a problem, i can access my home folder from Windows 10, but i cant access my Raid Array folders. i get the Error Code: 0x80070035, have done everything on the windows side but still i cant figure out what i need to change in my samba config.

i have the path to my Raid Array under mnt folder, i have the grp named SAN that my user are member of on my CentOS 7 server and so on, folders and subfolders have user:SAN and i used chmod -R 777. 

turned off SELinux, and firewalld. disabled...

iam a bit lost atm :(

Don't forget to add -R to the chcon command when the shared folder already contains files or folders, otherwise you won't be able to acces to them :)...

I also followed these steps perfectly but I can' authenticat yet. My Windows client is also in the same workgroup as in the config file, I've changed the ownership and group for the folder, I've added the firewall exception, I've configured SeLinux as stated above, I've restarted the services... I even disabled the firewall and SeLinux temporarily but still no luck. I wonder what's going on...

thanks !

I'd been trying to get this working for hours and your guide took minutes. 

Thank you very much for this helpful tuorial.

I only had one Problem: I've created an anonymous and a secured share. After I've created the secured share I couldn't write in the anonymous share anymore. The Windows share simply said 'Permission denied' on the attempt to create folder or similar. (The funny thing is, that the permission worked before I've added the secured share)

Anyways, the solution to the problem is to add the property ' guest only = yes ' to the anonymous share.

I got samba up in centos 7 and can see folder in win 7 but I try to copy docs in folder in centos 7 to pass to win7 but I can not see it in win7 but if I create file in win7 in share folder then i can see it in centos7.

It samba only one way file transer- in my case win7 to centos7.

I dont think that should be the case. I must be missing something or not ?

I tried the secure samba config but it doesn't ask me for username and password when I tried to mount it on Windows. Any help?

same here

Did you create an SMB User ?

smbpasswd -a alex

Replace alex with the account you would like to grant access SMB Access to.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! 

Only this allowed me the access.

Try mapping the share from Command Prompt using;

net use * \\servernameorIP\sharename /user:SMBUser 'Password'

This will force the share to be mapped by authenticating the user account you created using smbpasswd

Awesome job! This helped us

IT'S TOTALLY WRONG TO USE ("mv" command to make the backup because you will loose all the content from the original file "/etc/samba/smb.conf" that going to move completely in the new file" /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak")  IT'S BETTER TO USE "cp"=COPY command for the BACKUP FROM THE ORIGINAL FILE!!!

Sorry to say that, but you are completely wrong here. The goal is to make a backup of the file AND to start with a new and empty file as you should paste the whole content of the file that is shown there and not edit any old content, so using mv here is the right command.

The alternative to use mv would be:

cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak
cat /dev/null > /etc/samba/smb.conf

So you would have to use 2 commands to have a renamed copy and start with an empty file then instead of using just the one mv command.

Hi,

You changed the owner of the secured directory to the user.group. How about the owner of its parent (i.e. /samba/). Does it matter?

The parent directory should be readable for the user and group, so if it has 755 permissions, then it's ok. If you use stricter permissions for it, then you would have to chown it to the same user and group then the secured directory.

I had trouble connecting from some Windows clients. Sometimes connection was really slow. I ran into nt_status_io_timeout when connecting with smbclient. Adding my hostname in /etc/hosts and setting my hostname in /etc/hostname solved the problem. Thanks for this great tutorial.

Thia tutorial is great, but I still am unable to access the secured folder from my windows 10 computer. It keeps saying it's not accessible and I don't have permissions to use this network resource. I follwed this step by step. Any ideas on how to correct this?

Yes, it should be definitely. By typing 'mv' you will just rename it but you will not create same file with .bak at the end. Nice hint.

The anonymous share works just fine, but the secured share does not work no matter what I try.  I followed the instructions, restored my server from a backup and started the tutorial over 4 times.

I can't authenticate with my samba user.  The samba user can access the directory through SSH just fine.

login as: srijansrijan@centos's password:[srijan@centos ~]$ cd /samba[srijan@centos samba]$ ls -lahtotal 4.0Kdrwxr-xr-x.  4 root   root     36 Jun 17 12:14 .dr-xr-xr-x. 18 root   root   4.0K Jun 17 11:04 ..drwxr-xr-x.  2 nobody nobody    6 Jun 17 12:13 anonymousdrwxrwxrwx.  2 srijan smbgrp    6 Jun 17 12:14 secured[srijan@centos samba]$ cd secured/[srijan@centos secured]$ ls -lahtotal 0drwxrwxrwx. 2 srijan smbgrp  6 Jun 17 12:14 .drwxr-xr-x. 4 root   root   36 Jun 17 12:14 ..[srijan@centos secured]$ touch testing.txt[srijan@centos secured]$ ls -lahtotal 0drwxrwxrwx. 2 srijan smbgrp 24 Jun 17 12:32 .drwxr-xr-x. 4 root   root   36 Jun 17 12:14 ..-rw-rw-r--. 1 srijan srijan  0 Jun 17 12:32 testing.txt[srijan@centos secured]$ ls -Zlahtotal 0drwxrwx---. 2 unconfined_u:object_r:samba_share_t:s0 srijan smbgrp 24 Jun 17 12:32 .drwxr-xr-x. 4 unconfined_u:object_r:default_t:s0 root   root   36 Jun 17 12:14 ..-rw-rw-r--. 1 unconfined_u:object_r:samba_share_t:s0 srijan srijan  0 Jun 17 12:32 testing.txt

I couldn't access the secured file which require the username and also the password. I've completely followed the steps above which create a group, add a user, create a smbpasswd for the user and also grant permission with the last command "chown -R user:sambagrp secured/" at the windows side, I attempted to access the secured file and inserted the username of user and smbpasswd of the user that I had mentioned just now, it still can't access the folder! please help !

When doing smbpasswd -a usernametry setting it to the actual user's password on the window's box. 

i cant to this i trayed everythng still nothing help needed pls 

This guide is excellent, I would complement it with this since I lost a lot of time trying to solve this. There is a problem with file ownership when more than one user works on the secured folder. I create two users in the same group (user1-user2), but the created files of each user are with the same user (Equivalent to a chown user1: user1). The solution to this I found in the forum http://askubuntu.com/questions/335055/how-to-force-group-ownership-on-samba-share. You must apply the following ... [root @ server] # chgrp smbgrp secured / && chmod g + s secured /

Very, very tks for this tutorial.

I have been struggeling to get a samba server running for awhile now. This was very well written and worked perfectly!! 

Thank you very much!

Amaizing! Thnx you so much partner, my samba service is up right now!!

Thank you!

I followed your tutorial to setup a samba service on CentOS 7, however it produces two same shared folder in windows, do you know how to avoid that? I created a question with more details here - https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/378507/how-to-remove-duplicate-samba-shared-folders

Thank you!

\\centos

I have done as per above steps.

i am unable to login under enter network credential  in windows security.

request soluation?.

Thanks for this! It helped me get up and going quickly and it was easy to understand, even if i fumbled around for a little bit. Great tutorial !

Great tutorial the only thing I'd change is instead of using chcon -t you should use semanage fcontext  to make the labeling survive a system relabel.

Good job!!! thank you so much!

The steps for enabling anonymous authentication do not work.

Thanks SO much! I had been going round in circles until your fine guide got me up and running.

Easy, clear, quick...

Finally. A good samba tutorial. tks.

Thanks ever so much.  With all the confusion around Windows 10 no longer working on SMB1 this worked a treat

Thanks for the tutorial.  When I try to: systemctl enable smb.service

I get XFCE PolicyKit Agent, followed with Failed to execute operation: Access denied

with user root, or sudo systemctl enable smb.service it gives the Failed to execute operation: Access denied immediately.

Any clues?

Thanks,

Can a CentOS 6 PDC using tdbsam backend migrate to Centos 7? Migrating CentOS 5 PDCs to CentOS 6 was straightforward but I'm afraid the CentOS 6 to 7 is not going to be that easy. The CentOS 5 to 6 migration was based on a single shell script that copied all the necessary configuration files and settings. I also used the script to replicate PDCs after system failures in single server environments.

Thanks for the writeup. If you get "network password is not correct" error in Windows 7, then follow the instructions here: https://superuser.com/a/1129426. In my case adding ntlm auth = yes to my smb.conf worked.

Your tutorial really helped me, thank you!!!!

I followed the steps for setting up the anonymous share, but it still wont connect, i set the firewall exception, as well as the selinux parameters, but it still wont connect.

My share folder is located on a pair of mirrored drives on my server.

HELP

Hello, I also had problems accessing the secured folder, using my machine that has windows 10 got the famous error 1219 that does not allow multiple user connections from windows. To solve this problem I deleted the connection from my windows using this command

net use / delete \\ centos \ Anonymous

Please read: https://superuser.com/questions/95872/sambawindows-allow-multiple-connections-by-different-users

Thank you so much

A workaround for large user communities, and groups is to run mount -t cifs with the windows userid's, which is a nice thing to have (join centos to the AD domain with realm join -U adminuser somedomain.com), enable the services as presented, and use sudo to allow the mounts and unmounts.  couple that with zenity in /etc/profile.d/ with a script to load up the login names and password dialogue boxes. 

this is a great doc!

Thanks a lot for clear simple and well explained procedure. Best of internet in that sense.

Hola

no faltaria habilitar el usuario samba  ? smbpasswd -e usuario

All is running. thanks you for the tutorial, is so good. but the last operation don't work on my client machine. after login my user, she gives me this message " my folder is not accessible... you might not have permissions to use this network ressource... 

Hello,

Please, how do I can denied deleting?

Great explanation, its worked for me.

Thank you very much! Great job!

How writable value work?. I tried set writable both yes or no but result is same, I always can create or modify the content of a file.  

If I want to access the secured folder from my domain I have to write the username as follows servername\user (centos\srijan)

smb.service not running