Red Hat / Gnome / Samba

[Buck]

In Red Hat 9, creating a smb share is super easy, can you create one through the GUI of gnome in Red Hat 8, or must it be command line?

 

[CougTek]

I guess no one has a clue about it. I never figured out how to use Samba myself (actually, I never really tried either, although I should now that Samba 3 seems to kick the ass of everything from Microsoft).

You are sole.

In related news, Red Hat will stop to support Red Hat 7.3 and 8 in December and Red Hat 9.0 in April (if it's not March) next year, so IMO, it would be a good idea for you to move to more recent versions or distros.

 

[Buck]

I figured it out. I just added the appropriate text and parameters to the smb.cfg file and set up the appropriate user and group permissions.

 

[blakerwry]

In KDE/konqueror I believe you can create a share by going to a folder's properties and going to the "local net sharing" tab... i dont know when/how this was implemented, but this is an easy GUI way that my Mepis system allows me to create an SMB share.. I believe it also worked in Debian woody.



Or.. you can use something like webmin to easily create a share via GUI...


editing the config file by hand doesnt look too bad... I created a share called "share" that points to the root of my bulk storage drive... I also created a share named "hlds" that points to my halflife server directory... here's what it looks like in my /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

[share]
     writable = yes
     path = /mnt/hdc1


[hlds]
     writeable = yes
     valid users = blake, root, hlds
     path = /home/hlds

I assume you simply write the stuff to the .conf file and then restart samba server.


adding a user is easy too.. easier to do via comamnd line than via gui if you ask me.

smbpasswd -a username password

 

[blakerwry]

sorry for being so slow.

 

[Mercutio]

Since I missed this thread, too, I'll go one step better and suggest webmin, which has a very handy interface for working with samba, among other tricks.

It is really very easy to get samba working for simple network file sharing. The only complexities are things like password synching and domain authentication.

 

[blakerwry]

For the fast reader, Merc.

Or.. you can use something like webmin to easily create a share via GUI...

I use a combination of VNC/SSH and webmin for managing my server. Webmin handles just about everything, but occasinally I'll want to install a program via kpackage/APT. For halflife server administration I have to use VNC/SSH.

I find webmin absolutely great for everything SAMBA, except creating users... the console is much faster and easier there.

 

[Buck]

This may sound like a silly question, but I'm not experienced with Linux: How do you install webmin under Red Hat 8? Remember, I'm used to the windows way of doing things.

 

[blakerwry]

goto webmin.com and follow the instructions for installing the tar file... (has worked for me on every system I've tried)

http://www.webmin.com/download.html


If you dont have good luck with that then you can try the redhat RPM. (there are instructions for that as well)



Once installed your webserver will run on port 10,000 by default. so point your browser to https://127.0.0.1:10000 (or possibly use http instead of https). You can substitute your hostname or IP for 127.0.0.1 if you wish.

 

[Buck]

Thanks Blake. I can get up to the login scree, but it won't accept my username and password. I'm trying to login as root and the password I use for root.

 

[Buck]

Have you used SWAT?

 

[blakerwry]

i've used SWAT, didnt like it... you can use SWAT and webmin at the same time if you wish.

The default username for webmin is usually "admin" or "root", the password is usually your root password but could be anything. When you install webmin from the tar file and run the setup script it will prompt you for the user/pass you'd like to use.

 

[Buck]

Thanks Blake. It didn't ask for a username or password during installation, however, the login ended up being "admin" and no password.

 

[blakerwry]

heh, how secure....


you can obviously set a user/pass for webmin, but something ou may not be aware of is that you can also restrict access based on IP so that only people on your LAN can access webmin, or even tighter so that only someone on the server can access webmin.

That's under webmin config-> IP access control. You can simply only allow hosts from 192.168.0.0 for your LAN or 127.0.0.1 for the local computer only.

 

[Buck]

How can I add Samba users?

 

[blakerwry]

adding a user is easy too.. easier to do via comamnd line than via gui if you ask me.

smbpasswd -a username password

That's the easy way to add a single user. I guess the webmin people thought it was easy enough that they didnt include an easy interface via GUI for adding single users.. however, there is a batch conversion of the system's users to become SAMBA users.

Actually, i think without encrypted passwords you didn't need to add SAMBA users.. but since encrypted passwords is the easiest way to work with winNT based Operating systems I'd leave it enabled and add your users via command line unless you have alot of users already entered into the linux system at which point using the batch conversion is easiest.

 

[Buck]

Ah yes, I forgot about that. I couldn't figure out why some users were samba users and others were not. Duh. Thanks Blake.

 

[zx]

In Red Hat 9, creating a smb share is super easy, can you create one through the GUI of gnome in Red Hat 8, or must it be command line?

No graphical interface for Samba in Red Hat 8.

I guess i'll check out red hat 9 .

 

[Buck]

Once you know how zx . . . er . . . make that if you remember, it's pretty easy.