Setting up a Samba server under Debian

Caveat: setting up a Samba server under Debian doesn't seem that easy... any more! It was in the good old times of SWAT, but since this has been removed from the repositories, it's becoming more and more tricky to get a running Samba server. So the following steps might or might not bring full success...

All of the steps below have to be executed as root, unless stated otherwise.

Setting up the Samba server

  1. Install the required packages: cifs-utils, libnss-mdns, samba, winbind (and perhaps some more... note sure anymore).
  2. Edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf; make sure that the line beginning with hosts: contains the entry wins.
  3. Set Sambas workgroup; the name does not really matter, but all computers (also Windows computers!) in the network should use the same workgroup. The workgroup is specified with the line 
    workgroup = <WORKGROUP>
    in the file smb.conf. After changing this file, the Samba daemon has to be restarted: 
    smbd restart
  4. Because of a bug (10604) in current Samba versions, the following line has to be added to /etc/samba/smb.conf: 
    idmap config * : range = 1000-1999999
    In the default smb.conf, there is already a line with "idmap" commented out, so it seems a good place to put this line.
  5. Add all Debian users that should be granted Samba access to the list of Samba users: 
    smbpasswd -a <username>
  6. If you are unsure which users have already been added to Samba, you can list them with 
    pdbedit -L -v

Setting up a Samba share

to be continued...

Sources

Details