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“main” (Installation and Administration) — 2004/6/25 — 13:29 — page 578 — #604

SMB servers provide hardware space to their clients by means of shares. A

share includes a directory and its subdirectories on the server. It is exported

by means of a name and can be accessed by its name. The share name can

be set to any name — it does not have to be the name of the export direc-

tory. A printer is also assigned a name. Clients can access the printer by its

name.

24.1.2 Installing and Conﬁguring the Server

If you intend to use Samba as a server, install samba. Start the services re-

quired for Samba with rcnmb start && rcsmb start and stop them

with rcsmb stop && rcnmb stop.

The main conﬁguration ﬁle of Samba is /etc/samba/smb.conf. This ﬁle

can be divided into two logical parts. The [global] section contains the

central and global settings. The [share] sections contain the individual

ﬁle and printer shares. By means of this approach, details regarding the

shares can be set differently or globally in the [global] section, which

enhances the structural transparency of the conﬁguration ﬁle.

The global Section

The following parameters of the [global] section need some adjustment

to match the requirements of your network setup so other machines can

access your Samba server via SMB in a Windows environment.

workgroup = TUX-NET This line assigns the Samba server to a work-

group. Replace TUX-NET with an appropriate workgroup of your net-

working environment. Your Samba server appears under its DNS

name unless this name has been assigned to any other machine in the

network. If the DNS name is not available, set the server name using

netbiosname=MYNAME. See mansmb.conf for more details about

this parameter.

os level = 2 This parameter triggers whether your Samba server tries to

become LMB (local master browser) for its work group. Choose a

very low value to spare the existing Windows network from any dis-

turbances caused by a misconﬁgured Samba server. More information

about this important topic can be found in the ﬁles BROWSING.txt

and BROWSING-Config.txt under the textdocs subdirectory of

the package documentation.

578 24.1. Samba