Samba configuration for public shares

sambasamba4

yesterday I upgraded my fedora box to the latest version, and with that, I also upgraded samba, now using samba 4. I used to access those share from any computer at home without user/password, but now there seems to be something wrong with the configuration.

Here is my smb.conf

[global]
    workgroup = mygroup
    server string = Samba Server Version %v
    netbios name = HOME-WS
    log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
    max log size = 50
    guest ok = yes
    security = share

[Media]
    path = /mnt/Media
    read only = yes
    browseable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    guest only = yes

[Music]
    path = /mnt/Music
    read only = yes
    browseable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    guest only = yes

Looking at the logs, there is a warning related to the security parameter

 WARNING: Ignoring invalid value 'share' for parameter 'security'

Does that means that samba 4 has finally removed 'share' as an option, is there any alternative to it, so that I can configure shares without passwords.

Best Answer

If you follow the FAQ link from JasonAzze, you will see there is a "map to guest" line which is also required, so you need both of these lines:

security = user
map to guest = Bad Password

I had the same problem as the OP, and I have tested that this solution works on Fedora 18

Related Solutions

Samba log in Guest always asked

Something to keep in mind is that Windows cleverly will only authenticate with one username per server, so if you have other shares on that server, you must have the same username and password for all of the shares on the server.

Samba Permissions – I’m going to throw it!

This might help. I do something similar, but only one share is open to the group's users. Other shares are read-only except for a single maintainer user. The [global] section of my smb.conf is almost identical to yours, except I don't use the force create/directory mode directives (in my case, they'd interfere with the other shares).

Here's the share definition:

[shared stuff]
        comment = blah, blah, etc
        path = /path/to/share
        write list = @sambagroup
        force group = +sambagroup
        read only = yes
        directory mask = 0775
        create mask = 0664
        guest ok = yes
        invalid users = root
        case sensitive = True
        default case = lower
        preserve case = yes
        short preserve case = yes

The important stuff here are these:

read only = yes -- by default, read only.
guest ok = yes -- guests can browse.
write list = @sambagroup -- Authenticated members of sambagroup can write.
force group = +sambagroup -- The + means that the force only applies to existing members of sambagroup. They're already the only ones who can write. I think, without the +, guest is given sambagroup credentials, which is not wanted (particularly with the write list directive above).
directory mask = 0775
create mask = 0664

These do exactly what you want yours to do: "drwxrwxr-x" on directories, "rwxrwxr-x" on files, and newly created files are owned by the user and sambagroup. The maintainers of the other shares get the same permissions as everyone else when working in shared stuff, and permissions & groups are normal when they work in the other shares.

My smb.conf has been working with only minor tweaks through several different versions of Samba, and currently is used with Samba 3.2.5. I never had it running on Ubuntu 8.04, but it ran on Ubuntu 7.04 for a long time before getting migrated to a recent Debian Lenny install.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Samba log in Guest always asked

Samba Permissions – I’m going to throw it!

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