HOW TO INSTALL AND TEST SAMBA ============================= STEP 0. Read the man pages. They contain lots of useful info that will help to get you started. If you don't know how to read man pages then try something like: nroff -man smbd.8 | more Also read the "SMB Guide" in the sub-directory SMBGuide of the distribution. This is an introduction to the Samba server suite, and also serves as an extended README file, including installation tips and traps. It is essential reading! STEP 1. install a smb client. There are several, eg: Pathworks, Lanmanager for DOS, Windows for Workgroups, Lanmanager for Windows, Lanmanager for OS/2, Windows NT come to mind. Lanmanager for dos is available via ftp from ftp.microsoft.com in bussys/MSclient/dos/. Please read the licensing stuff before downloading. Use the TCP/IP option in the client. Add your server to the \etc\lmhosts (or equivalent) file on the client. Note that your client must support TCP/IP. All the clients that I know of do, but with many TCP/IP is not installed by default. With some you have to get an optional add-on to support TCP/IP. The add-ons for windows for workgroups, dos and OS/2 are available via anonymous ftp from ftp.microsoft.com. The TCP/IP package for WfWg is available from ftp.microsoft.com as the file bussys/msclient/wfw/wfwt32.exe. STEP 2. Install Samba on a unix box. To do this edit the Makefile for your flavour of unix and preferences then type "make" or "make install". This will create smbd, nmbd and smbclient. STEP 3. Create the smb configuration file. There is a sample configuration file called smb.conf.sample supplied with the distribution. It has lots of comments on some of the available options. See the man page for all the options. The simplest useful configuration file would be something like this: [homes] guest ok = no read only = no which would allow connections by anyone with an account on the server, using their login name as the service name. Note that "make install" will not install a smb.conf file. You need to create it yourself. You will also need to create the path you specify in the Makefile for the logs etc, such as /usr/local/samba. STEP 4. Put the smbd, nmbd and smb configuration file in some sensible place, like /usr/local/samba/. STEP 5. Next choose a method for starting the smbd and nmbd. Either you can put them in inetd.conf and have them started on demand by inetd, or you can start them as daemons either from the command line or in /etc/rc.local. See the man pages for details on the command line options. STARTING IT FROM INETD.CONF =========================== Look at your /etc/services. What is defined at port 139/tcp. If nothing is defined then add a line like this: netbios-ssn 139/tcp similarly for 137/udp you should have an entry like: netbios-ns 137/udp Next edit your /etc/inetd.conf and add two lines something like this: netbios-ssn stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/samba/smbd smbd netbios-ns dgram udp wait root /usr/local/samba/nmbd nmbd assuming you compiled the appropriate paths to the config files into the binaries by putting them in the Makefile. The exact syntax of /etc/inetd.conf varies between unixes. Look at the other entries in inetd.conf for a guide. NOTE: On some unixes you may need to give the nmbd a -B parameter to specify the broadcast address of your interface. Run ifconfig as root if you don't know what the broadcast is for your net. nmbd tries to determine it at run time, but fails on some unixes. See the section on "testing nmbd" for a method of finding if you need to do this. NOTE2: Some unixes only accept around 5 parameters on the command line in inetd. This means you shouldn't use spaces between the options and arguments, or you should use a script, and start the script from inetd. Restart inetd, perhaps just send it a HUP. If you have installed an earlier version of nmbd then you may need to kill nmbd as well. ALTERNATIVE: STARTING IT AS A DAEMON ==================================== To start the server as a daemon you should create a script something like this one, perhaps calling it "startsmb" #!/bin/sh /usr/local/samba/smbd -D /usr/local/samba/nmbd -D then make it executable with "chmod +x startsmb" You can then run startsmb by hand or execute it from /etc/rc.local To kill it send a kill signal to the processes nmbd and smbd. STEP 7. Try listing the shares available on your server smbclient -L yourhostname Your should get back a list of shares available on your server. If you don't then something is incorrectly setup. Note that this method can also be used to see what shares are available on other LanManager clients (such as WfWg). STEP 8. try connecting with the unix client. eg: smbclient "\\yourhostname\aservice" Typically the "yourhostname" would be the name of the host where you installed smbd. The "aservice" is any service you have defined in the smb.conf file. Try your user name if you just have a [homes] section in smb.conf. For example if your unix host is bambi and your login name is fred you would type: smbclient "\\bambi\fred" NOTE: The number of slashes to use depends on the type of shell you use. You may need "\\\\bambi\\fred" with some shells. STEP 9. Try connecting from a dos/NT/os-2 client. Try mounting disks. eg: net use d: \\servername\service Try printing. eg: net use lpt1: \\servername\spoolservice print filename Celebrate, or send me a bug report! TESTING NMBD ============ As of version 1.7.00 it is possible to test nmbd to see if it is correctly installed. This can also test to see if it can auto-detect your broadcast address. Under some operating systems you can only test the broadcast part if running as root. You can test other functionality from a non-root account. To test from root use: nmbd -L TESTNAME where TESTNAME is the netbios name you wish to test. This would typically be the hostname of the unix host where you installed nmbd. It should return the IP address of the host you are looking for. If it doesn't then something is wrong with your nmbd configuration. If it fails then it could mean it is not correctly detecting your broadcast address or netmask. You will then need to supply the -B and -N parameters. See the nmbd man page for details. It has succeeded if somewhere in the output is a line like: ww.xx.yy.zz HOSTNAME which means it managed to look the IP correctly. To test from a non-root account use: nmbd -B HOSTNAME -L TESTNAME where hostname is the host name of the host where nmbd is installed and TESTNAME is the name you want to test. Typically this would be the same as HOSTNAME. CHOOSING THE PROTOCOL LEVEL =========================== The SMB protocol has many dialects. Currently Samba supports 4, called CORE, COREPLUS, LANMAN1 and LANMAN2. Support for LANMAN2 is not complete yet. You can choose what protocols to support in the smb.conf file. The default is LANMAN2 but some people may prefer to use LANMAN1. In older versions of Samba you may have found it necessary to use COREPLUS. The limitations that led to this have mostly been fixed. It is now less likely that you will want to use less than LANMAN1. The only remaining advantage of COREPLUS is that for some obscure reason WfWg preserves the case of passwords in this protocol, whereas under LANMAN1 or LANMAN2 it uppercases all passwords before sending them, forcing you to use the "password level=" option in some cases. The main advantage of LANMAN2 is support for long filenames with some clients (eg: smbclient or Windows NT). If you have troubles with this feature then send me a bug report - long filename support is only recent. See the smb.conf manual page for more details. Note: To support print queue reporting you may find that you have to use TCP/IP as the default protocol under WfWg. For some reason if you leave Netbeui as the default it may break the print queue reporting on some systems. It is presumably a WfWg bug. PRINTING FROM UNIX ================== To use a printer that is available via a smb-based server from a unix host you will need to compile the smbclient program. You then need to install the script "smbprint". Read the instruction in smbprint for more details.