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Samba Server

Samba is a re-implementation of the SMB network protocol, and allows Linux computer to integrate into Microsoft' active directory environments without any issue.

By using samba in the raspberry we can share directories in a way they can be accessed on almost every operating system.

This is probably the Easiest way to set up a NAS, although it exists other alternatives Samba is the one that i have use the most.

Setting the samba server

Initial steps

  • Before set up the SMB share we need to be sure that the Raspberry is up-to-date.
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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
  • Now we need to install the samba software
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sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin
  • Now we can set up the folder to share, this folder can be in any location, in the internal storage or in a mounted external hard drive.
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mkdir /home/pi/shared
  • To share the folder with the samba software we need to modify the smb.conf file
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sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

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[pimyshare]
path = /home/pi/shared
writeable=Yes
create mask=0777
directory mask=0777
public=no
  1. [pimyshare] the text in brackets define the point were we will access the folder itself, example //raspberrypi/pimyshare.
  2. path this is the path to the directory that we are going to share
  3. writeable set as yes allow the user to write in the folder.
  4. create mask and directory mask define the permission for both folder and files, if is set as \(0777\) users are allow to read, write and execute.
  5. public if is set to no ti will require a valid user to grand access to the folder

save the document in this case ctrl + X and Y

Set a user for the samba share

In this case we will create a password that follow the default password of raspberry, so the user will be pi and the password will be raspberry

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sudo smbpasswd -a pi

we need to restart the server now

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sudo systemctl restart smbd

we can get the host name with hostname -I

Connecting to the Samba server

In this case the configuration will be different in windows and Windows

Windows

  • File Explorer > Computer > Map network drive

samba

  • now we need to input the name of the host or the IP address follow by the name of the folder ( name in brackets in the configuration file)

samba

we will need to log in first with the user and password defined before

MacOS

We will need to connect to a server and the address will be something like smb://raspberryhost/pimyshared