security = share

encrypt passwords = Yes

[homes]

comment = Home Directories

read only = No

create mask = 0750

[Public]

comment = Public Stuff

path = /home/Public

read only = No

guest ok = Yes

You can see that 3 shares have been defined. Global, Homes and

Public. Public is user-defined share but Global and Homes are both special

sections.

Any options defined under global are applied to all shares that are

defined below. However, if the same option is specified in a share also

then the parameters of the share override the parameters of the global

declaration.

Homes is another special section that allows users with accounts on the

Samba server to access their home directories. When a client connects to

the Samba server and tries to access a share then Samba checks for the

name of the share in the configuration file. If no share is found with

that name then it is assumed to be a username which is then checked

against the password file. If a username is found in the password file and

the supplied password is correct then the client is given access to his

home directory. It can be specified here whether the client is given full

read-write access or read-only access.

Another special section that can be defined is Printers. If you want to

give Windows clients print access to the printer on the Samba server then

required options are defined under here. More on that later.

Let's look at my smb.conf file for now.

The first line identifies the section as global. Common options that go

under this section are:

Workgroup name: Enter the workgroup that you will be join here.

Server string: Enter a more descriptive comment regarding your computer in

here. It will be displayed along with your computer name. Not really

required but it helps to put it in there.

Security: This is where you decide what level of security you want to use

for the Samba server. Possible options here are user, share, server or

domain.

User: The various shares are first checked against a valid username and

password combination before access is given to the share. This is the

default method of access if no other is specified in version 2.0.6. If you

have a older version of Samba then the share level security is the default