FreeBSD - Samba Setup

Due to recent changes in Samba, learn about the utility pdbedit and why to use the tdbsam backend database instead of the smbpasswd backend database. See SAMBA documentation on Account Information Databases for useful background information.

Install the Samba Port

Install the samba package via portinstall -R net/samba3 or cd /usr/ports/net/samba3; make install clean.

Edit Samba Configuration File

Edit /usr/local/etc/smb.conf, which is installed with the Samba port.

• Set the workgroup setting to the name of the workgroup to which your Windows machines belong
• Set the server string setting to some useful description that you want to have show up on Network Neighborhood in File Manager on the Windows clients
• Set the hosts allow setting to your private network address range
• Set the netbios name if you want the name of the machine as broadcast by Samba to be different from the machine's name
• Set the passdb backend to tdbsam since the old smbpasswd backend is obsolete
• If you want to share a printer, ensure the printing setting indicates the special printing system used, if necessary
• Add any other specific file and/or printer shares you need - this includes setting:
  • path to the absolute path of the directory you want to share on your FreeBSD box
  • public to no since you only want authenticated users to access it
  • writable to yes or no if you want read-write or read-only access, respectively
  • browsable to yes or no if you want people to see the share when browsing regardless of authentication status, or if you want to practice security by obscurity by hiding this share from browsers
  • comment to whatever additional description you want to give to browsers
  • users to the comma-separated list of SMB users to which you want to allow access

Run testparm to test the configuration you just created.

Edit /usr/local/etc/rc.d/samba file

Edit /usr/local/etc/rc.d/samba to enable samba. This file was installed as part of the installation of the Samba port. Uncomment the line samba_enable="YES". You don't need to uncomment the line for winbindd_enable if you do not have a Windows domain controller in your local network.

Editing /etc/rc.d

This seems to be already set up on my machine when I upgraded to X.org 7.2 and ran the mergebase.sh script as part of that upgrade; the script added a line to /etc/rc.d so that it would run the rc.d system in /usr/local.

Run adduser and pw as needed

Run adduser to add any needed user accounts. Run pw to add any groups and modify group memberships.

Update Firewall Configuration to Permit Samba Communications on Your Network

What you need to do varies depending on what firewall you are using.

For ipfilter, I used the following rules in my ipfilter rules file build script:

• pass out quick on $outif proto udp from any to $localnetwork/24 port = 137 keep state
• pass out quick on $outif proto udp from any to $localnetwork/24 port = 138 keep state
• pass in quick on $outif proto udp from any to $localnetwork/24 port = 137
• pass in quick on $outif proto udp from any to $localnetwork/24 port = 138
• pass in quick on $outif proto tcp from any to $localnetwork/24 port = 139

Start Samba

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/samba start

Run pdbedit to Set Up User Accounts for Samba

pdbedit -a username will ask you for the password of the user you are adding.

Test Locally

Test the Samba configuration locally using the following command:

smbclient //yourMachineName/yourShareName -U validSambaUser

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