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Setting up samba with password protection

To easily share your files to linux and windows clients, samba is still the preferred choice. In this guide I will show how to setup a samba server on centos 5 machine, that can be accessed only by certain people protected by password.

1. Install samba on the server
   
• # yum install samba
2. Create the group that all the samba users will be contained in, for example 'samba'
   
• # groupadd samba
3. Create samba users and add it to the above group, which is in this example is 'samba'. Below is the example to create a user named 'user1' and add it to group 'samba'. Set the password for user1
   
• # useradd user1 -g samba
• # passwd user1
  
4. Create the directory to be shared. In this example, i will use /home/shared. Change the ownership to root and group ownership to the 'samba' group. Change permission so that only user and group can read write and execute
   
• # mkdir /home/shared
• # chown -R root.samba /home/shared
• # chmod -R 775 /home/shared
5. Below is a simple setting of samba
• [global] workgroup = samba
  server string = Samba Server
  security = user [shared_folder]
  comment = Sharing place
  path = /home/shared
  public = no
  writable = yes
  printable = no
  write list = @samba
  create mask = 0755
  force create mode = 0755
  directory mask = 0775
  force directory mode = 0775
• What the above setting does basically is to setup /home/shared as samba shared directory but can only be accessed by user from group samba
6. Add user/users to samba
• # smbpasswd -a user1
7. Start smb service, restart if it has already been started
   
• # /etc/init.d/smb start
8. 'user1' can now access the samba server using address 'smb://samba_server_ip_address/shared_folder' at any nautilus address bar. For windows client, you can see at your 'My Network Places' and find a workgroup named 'samba'
   

'Watch'ing your commands running

Sometimes when you run a command, you need to see the progress of the command, yet you do not want to keep refreshing the command by repeating it a few times. There is a useful command in linux that can do the job of refreshing for you which is watch. According to the watch man page: "watch - execute a program periodically, showing output fullscreen". By default watch will refresh the command in the interval of 2 seconds but this can be changed according to your needs.
For example, you want to see the memory usage of your computer every 2 seconds:

$ watch free -m

This kind of output will show:


(Click on the image for clearer view)

To set the interval(15 seconds) which watch will refresh, use -n option:

$ watch -n 15 free -m

The output:


(Click on the image for clearer view)

To see the differences of each refresh session, use -d. Watch will highlight the changes that happening on that particular moment:

$ watch -d free -m


(Click on image for clearer view)

To exit from watch, just use your trusty Ctrl-c