In this tutorial, we will show you how to install the Samba on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Samba is free and open-source software that can be used to share files, folders, and printers between Linux and Windows systems.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Samba on a CentOS 8.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 8.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Samba on CentOS 8
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
sudo dnf update sudo dnf install epel-release
Step 2. Installing Samba on CentOS 8.
Now we run the command below to install Samba and its dependencies:
sudo dnf install samba samba-common samba-client
Once the installation is complete, start the Sambe service, enable it to auto-start at system boot time:
sudo systemctl start smb sudo systemctl status smb
Step 3. Samba Configuration.
First, create a backup copy of the default Samba configuration file which comes with pre-configuration settings and various configuration directives:
cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.orig
Next, create a shared folder called shared and assign the necessary permissions and ownership:
mkdir -p /srv/samba/idroot chmod -R 0777 /srv/samba/idroot chown -R nobody:nobody /srv/samba/idroot chcon -t samba_share_t /srv/samba/idroot
Now we create a new samba configuration file:
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
Add the following lines:
[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
netbios name = rhel
security = user
...
[idroot]
comment = Anonymous File Server Share
path = /srv/samba/idroot
browsable =yes
writable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
force user = nobody
Save and close the file. Then, restart the Samba service to apply the changes:
sudo systemctl restart smb
To verify that the configuration is sound, run testparm command:
testparm
Output:
Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf rlimit_max: increasing rlimit_max (1024) to minimum Windows limit (46384) Unknown parameter encountered: "netbios" Ignoring unknown parameter "netbios" Processing section "[homes]" Processing section "[printers]" Processing section "[print$]" Processing section "[idroot]" Loaded services file OK. Server role: ROLE_STANDALONE Press enter to see a dump of your service definitions # Global parameters [global] printcap name = cups security = USER idmap config * : backend = tdb cups options = raw [homes] browseable = No comment = Home Directories inherit acls = Yes read only = No valid users = %S %D%w%S [printers] browseable = No comment = All Printers create mask = 0600 path = /var/tmp printable = Yes [print$] comment = Printer Drivers create mask = 0664 directory mask = 0775 force group = @printadmin path = /var/lib/samba/drivers write list = @printadmin root [idroot] comment = Anonymous File Server Share force user = nobody guest ok = Yes path = /srv/samba/idroot read only = No
Step 4. Configure Firewall.
We must open the appropriate ports so that the samba-shared resources can be accessed from other machines:
sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=samba --zone=public --permanent sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Step 5. Accessing Samba Share Path.
To access samba share from windows press Windows Key+ R to launch Run Dialogue. Enter the IP address or Hostname and press Enter.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Samba. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Samba on your CentOS 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Samba website.
