Build a Samba file server

20 Monitoring Your Samba setup
Once you have everything configured and Samba is being used in your network by several people, there are times when you need keep an eye on things. Samba has a feature that allows you to monitor the connections to your Samba server.

# smbstatus

To get a more detailed report, you can use one of these options:

# smbstatus -b
# smbstatus -v

21 Samba management tools
Throughout this guide we have only used command-line-based configuration options to set up, configure and manage our Samba setup. There are a few tools out there which will allow you to perform similar steps using a web-based or desktop-based application. Two popular tools are Webmin and SWAT. Webmin is a very powerful web-based tool that helps you to manage several aspects of your Linux box over the web, including Samba. SWAT, or Samba Web Administration Tool, is a web-based tool that is dedicated to managing your Samba setup.

22 KISS
Over the years I have set up and managed several Linux servers. One thing that I have come to realise is that the good old ‘KISS’ (keep it simple, stupid) philosophy is one to live by. The same thing applies to your Samba configuration. Although the system allows you several tweaks and many parameters to apply these tweaks to, I strongly urge you to figure out and implement as simple a configuration as possible, especially if you are operating your Samba server in a work-related environment.

In conclusion
We have looked at several configuration options for Samba shares. We looked at how to grant simple or fine-grain permissions to users and groups, and how to make the shares read-only or writable. There are dozens of other parameters that Samba provides users with, which are beyond the scope of this article. The Samba project has a very good collection of documentation located at the project’s website. They also have a wiki which has some very useful information. You can also find many books on Samba to help you with your implementation – whatever you decide to do though, good luck!

You can find more tutorials from Linux User & Developer here.

This article originally appeared in issue 89 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.