I use Samba to share files with my Linux based media servers. It’s a pain in the arse and I hate it. Getting a share on the network is easy but the permissions punch me in the face. I’ll often end up with a share writable by one user but not another, or writable by many users but the files only readable by other users. Last week the whole wobbly system broke down because of a permissions issue and I was forced to figure it out once and for all. Turns out that I was over thinking it, and that it’s actually quote simple. Assuming that Samba is already installed, here’s a simple method for creating a public Samba share:
Step 1: Create the share location
sudo mkdir -p /share/media
sudo chown root:users /share/media
sudo chmod 2775 /share/media
Step 2: Add your local user to the ‘users’ group.
sudo adduser <username> users
Step 3: Configure SAMBA
Add the following to the bottom of /etc/samba/smb.conf
[public]
comment = Shared Data
path = /share/media
browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
force group = users
writeable = yes
create mask = 0664
force directory mode = 0775
Finally, restart Samba to initialise the new configuration.
sudo service smbd restart
You might need to log out and back in again for the permission changes in step 1 to take effect.