Installation guide

Section 6.2:Setting Up a High Availability Samba Service 121
writable
By default, the share access permissions are conservatively set as non-writable. Tune this
parameter according to your site-specific preferences.
path
Defaults to the first filesystem mount point specified within the service configuration.
This should be adjusted to match the specific directory or subdirectory intended to be
available as a share to Windows clients.
6.2.6 Windows Client Access to Samba Shares
Windows clients see no discernible difference when accessing shares that are being served by a high
availability cluster. From the Windows client’s perspective the only requirement is that they access the
Samba share via its floating IP address (or associated hostname) which was configured using clu-
admin, e.g. 10.0.0.10. The Windows clients should not directly access the share from either of the
cluster member system’s IP address (e.g. clu3 or clu4).
Depending upon the authorization scheme to be utilized in the cluster environment, the smbpasswd
command may have to be used to establish Windows account information on the cluster servers. When
establishing these accounts, it is required that the same Samba related account information be setup
on both cluster members. This can be accomplished either by running smbpassword similarly on
both cluster members, or by running the command on one system and then copying over the result-
ing /etc/samba/smbpasswd file to the other system. For example, to enable a Windows client
system named sarge to access a Samba share served by the cluster members, run the following com-
mand on both cluster members, taking care to specify the same username and password each time:
smbpasswd -a sarge
On a Windows client, the Samba share can then be accessed in the conventional manner. For ex-
ample, it is possible to click on the
Start button on the main taskbar, followed by selecting Run.
This brings up a dialog box where the clustered Samba share name can be specified. For example:
\\10.0.0.10\acct or \\cluacct\acct. To access the samba share from a Windows client it
is also possible to use the
Map Network Drive feature. Ensure that the hostname portion of the share
name refers to the floating service IP address. Following the hostname / IP addresses from the above
/etc/hosts excerpt; the correct name to refer to this highly available cluster share is \\clu-
acct\acct. The share should not be accessed by referring to the name of the cluster server itself.
For example, do not access this share as either \\clu3\acct or \\clu4\acct. If a share is in-
correctly referred to by the cluster server name (e.g. \\clu3\acct), then the Windows client will
only be able to access the share while it is being actively served by clu3, thereby negating any high
availability benefits.
Unlike the NFS protocol, the Windows based CIFS/SMB protocol is more stateful. As a consequence,
in the Windows environment, it is the responsibility of the individual application to take appropriate