Manpage of SMB.CONF

SMB.CONF

Section: (5)
BSD mandoc

NAME

smb.conf - The configuration file for the Samba suite

SYNOPSIS

The smb.conf file is a configuration file for the Samba suite. smb.conf contains runtime configuration information for the Samba programs. The smb.conf file is designed to be configured and administered by the swat(8) program. The complete description of the file format and possible parameters held within are here for reference purposes.

FILE FORMAT

The file consists of sections and parameters. A section begins with the name of the section in square brackets and continues until the next section begins. Sections contain parameters of the form

name = value .PP The file is line-based - that is, each newline-terminated line represents either a comment, a section name or a parameter.

Section and parameter names are not case sensitive.

Only the first equals sign in a parameter is significant. Whitespace before or after the first equals sign is discarded. Leading, trailing and internal whitespace in section and parameter names is irrelevant. Leading and trailing whitespace in a parameter value is discarded. Internal whitespace within a parameter value is retained verbatim.

Any line beginning with a semicolon (';') or a hash ('#') character is ignored, as are lines containing only whitespace.

Any line ending in a '\' is continued on the next line in the customary UNIX fashion.

The values following the equals sign in parameters are all either a string (no quotes needed) or a boolean, which may be given as yes/no, 0/1 or true/false. Case is not significant in boolean values, but is preserved in string values. Some items such as create modes are numeric.

SECTION DESCRIPTIONS

Each section in the configuration file (except for the [global] section) describes a shared resource (known as a "share"). The section name is the name of the shared resource and the parameters within the section define the shares attributes.

There are three special sections, [global], [homes] and [printers], which are described under special sections. The following notes apply to ordinary section descriptions.

A share consists of a directory to which access is being given plus a description of the access rights which are granted to the user of the service. Some housekeeping options are also specifiable.

Sections are either file share services (used by the client as an extension of their native file systems) or printable services (used by the client to access print services on the host running the server).

Sections may be designated guest services, in which case no password is required to access them. A specified UNIX guest account is used to define access privileges in this case.

Sections other than guest services will require a password to access them. The client provides the username. As older clients only provide passwords and not usernames, you may specify a list of usernames to check against the password using the "user=" option in the share definition. For modern clients such as Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000, this should not be necessary.

Note that the access rights granted by the server are masked by the access rights granted to the specified or guest UNIX user by the host system. The server does not grant more access than the host system grants.

The following sample section defines a file space share. The user has write access to the path /home/bar. The share is accessed via the share name "foo":

                [foo]
                path = /home/bar
                writeable = true

The following sample section defines a printable share. The share is readonly, but printable. That is, the only write access permitted is via calls to open, write to and close a spool file. The guest ok parameter means access will be permitted as the default guest user (specified elsewhere):

                [aprinter]
                path = /usr/spool/public
                writeable = false
                printable = true
                guest ok = true

SPECIAL SECTIONS

THE GLOBAL SECTION

parameters in this section apply to the server as a whole, or are defaults for sections which do not specifically define certain items. See the notes under PARAMETERS for more information.

THE HOMES SECTION

If a section called homes is included in the configuration file, services connecting clients to their home directories can be created on the fly by the server.

When the connection request is made, the existing sections are scanned. If a match is found, it is used. If no match is found, the requested section name is treated as a user name and looked up in the local password file. If the name exists and the correct password has been given, a share is created by cloning the [homes] section.

Some modifications are then made to the newly created share:

bu: The share name is changed from homes to the located username.
bu: If no path was given, the path is set to the user's home directory.

If you decide to use a path= line in your [homes] section then you may find it useful to use the %S macro. For example :

path=/data/pchome/%S

would be useful if you have different home directories for your PCs than for UNIX access.

This is a fast and simple way to give a large number of clients access to their home directories with a minimum of fuss.

A similar process occurs if the requested section name is "homes", except that the share name is not changed to that of the requesting user. This method of using the [homes] section works well if different users share a client PC.

The [homes] section can specify all the parameters a normal service section can specify, though some make more sense than others. The following is a typical and suitable [homes] section:

                                [homes]
                        writeable = yes

An important point is that if guest access is specified in the [homes] section, all home directories will be visible to all clients without a password. In the very unlikely event that this is actually desirable, it would be wise to also specify read only access.

Note that the browseable flag for auto home directories will be inherited from the global browseable flag, not the [homes] browseable flag. This is useful as it means setting browseable=no in the [homes] section will hide the [homes] share but make any auto home directories visible.

THE PRINTERS SECTION

This section works like [homes], but for printers.

If a [printers] section occurs in the configuration file, users are able to connect to any printer specified in the local host's printcap file.

When a connection request is made, the existing sections are scanned. If a match is found, it is used. If no match is found, but a [homes] section exists, it is used as described above. Otherwise, the requested section name is treated as a printer name and the appropriate printcap file is scanned to see if the requested section name is a valid printer share name. If a match is found, a new printer share is created by cloning the [printers] section.

A few modifications are then made to the newly created share:

bu: The share name is set to the located printer name
bu: If no printer name was given, the printer name is set to the located printer name
bu: If the share does not permit guest access and no username was given, the username is set to the located printer name.

Note that the [printers] service MUST be printable - if you specify otherwise, the server will refuse to load the configuration file.

Typically the path specified would be that of a world-writeable spool directory with the sticky bit set on it. A typical [printers] entry would look like this:

                [printers]
                        path = /usr/spool/public
                        guest ok = yes
                        printable = yes

All aliases given for a printer in the printcap file are legitimate printer names as far as the server is concerned. If your printing subsystem doesn't work like that, you will have to set up a pseudo-printcap. This is a file consisting of one or more lines like this:

                                alias|alias|alias|alias...

Each alias should be an acceptable printer name for your printing subsystem. In the [global] section, specify the new file as your printcap. The server will then only recognize names found in your pseudo-printcap, which of course can contain whatever aliases you like. The same technique could be used simply to limit access to a subset of your local printers.

An alias, by the way, is defined as any component of the first entry of a printcap record. Records are separated by newlines, components (if there are more than one) are separated by vertical bar symbols ('|').

NOTE: On SYSV systems which use lpstat to determine what printers are defined on the system you may be able to use "printcap name = lpstat" to automatically obtain a list of printers. See the "printcap name" option for more details.

PARAMETERS

parameters define the specific attributes of sections.

Some parameters are specific to the [global] section (e.g., security). Some parameters are usable in all sections (e.g., create mode). All others are permissible only in normal sections. For the purposes of the following descriptions the [homes] and [printers] sections will be considered normal. The letter G in parentheses indicates that a parameter is specific to the [global] section. The letter S indicates that a parameter can be specified in a service specific section. Note that all S parameters can also be specified in the [global] section - in which case they will define the default behavior for all services.

parameters are arranged here in alphabetical order - this may not create best bedfellows, but at least you can find them! Where there are synonyms, the preferred synonym is described, others refer to the preferred synonym.

VARIABLE SUBSTITUTIONS

Many of the strings that are settable in the config file can take substitutions. For example the option "path = /tmp/%u" would be interpreted as "path = /tmp/john" if the user connected with the username john.

These substitutions are mostly noted in the descriptions below, but there are some general substitutions which apply whenever they might be relevant. These are:

%S: the name of the current service, if any.
%P: the root directory of the current service, if any.
%u: user name of the current service, if any.
%g: primary group name of %u.
%U: session user name (the user name that the client wanted, not necessarily the same as the one they got).
%G: primary group name of %U.
%H: the home directory of the user given by %u.
%v: the Samba version.
%h: the Internet hostname that Samba is running on.
%m: the NetBIOS name of the client machine (very useful).
%L: the NetBIOS name of the server. This allows you to change your config based on what the client calls you. Your server can have a "dual personality".
%M: the Internet name of the client machine.
%N: the name of your NIS home directory server. This is obtained from your NIS auto.map entry. If you have not compiled Samba with the --with-automount option then this value will be the same as %.
%p: the path of the service's home directory, obtained from your NIS auto.map entry. The NIS auto.map entry is split up as "%N:%p".
%R: the selected protocol level after protocol negotiation. It can be one of CORE, COREPLUS, LANMAN1, LANMAN2 or NT1.
%d: The process id of the current server process.
%a: the architecture of the remote machine. Only some are recognized, and those may not be 100% reliable. It currently recognizes Samba, WfWg, WinNT and Win95. Anything else will be known as "UNKNOWN". If it gets it wrong then sending a level 3 log to samba@samba.org
<URL:mailto:samba@samba.org> should allow it to be fixed.
%I: The IP address of the client machine.
%T: the current date and time.
%$(envvar): The value of the environment variable envar.

There are some quite creative things that can be done with these substitutions and other smb.conf options.

NAME MANGLING

Samba supports "name mangling" so that DOS and Windows clients can use files that don't conform to the 8.3 format. It can also be set to adjust the case of 8.3 format filenames.

There are several options that control the way mangling is performed, and they are grouped here rather than listed separately. For the defaults look at the output of the testparm program.

All of these options can be set separately for each service (or globally, of course).

The options are:

mangle case= yes/no: controls if names that have characters that aren't of the "default" case are mangled. For example, if this is yes then a name like "Mail" would be mangled. Default no.
case sensitive = yes/no: controls whether filenames are case sensitive. If they aren't then Samba must do a filename search and match on passed names. Default no.
default case = upper/lower: controls what the default case is for new filenames. Default lower.
preserve case = yes/no: controls if new files are created with the case that the client passes, or if they are forced to be the "default" case. Default yes.
short preserve case = yes/no: controls if new files which conform to 8.3 syntax, that is all in upper case and of suitable length, are created upper case, or if they are forced to be the "default" case. This option can be use with "preserve case = yes" to permit long filenames to retain their case, while short names are lowercased. Default yes.

By default, Samba 2.2 has the same semantics as a Windows NT server, in that it is case insensitive but case preserving.

NOTE ABOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION

There are a number of ways in which a user can connect to a service. The server uses the following steps in determining if it will allow a connection to a specified service. If all the steps fail, then the connection request is rejected. However, if one of the steps succeeds, then the following steps are not checked.

If the service is marked "guest only = yes" then steps 1 to 5 are skipped.

1.: If the client has passed a username/password pair and that username/password pair is validated by the UNIX system's password programs then the connection is made as that username. Note that this includes the \\server\service%username method of passing a username.
2.: If the client has previously registered a username with the system and now supplies a correct password for that username then the connection is allowed.
3.: The client's NetBIOS name and any previously used user names are checked against the supplied password, if they match then the connection is allowed as the corresponding user.
4.: If the client has previously validated a username/password pair with the server and the client has passed the validation token then that username is used.
5.: If a "user = " field is given in the smb.conf file for the service and the client has supplied a password, and that password matches (according to the UNIX system's password checking) with one of the usernames from the "user=" field then the connection is made as the username in the "user=" line. If one of the username in the "user=" list begins with a '@' then that name expands to a list of names in the group of the same name.
6.: If the service is a guest service then a connection is made as the username given in the "guest account =" for the service, irrespective of the supplied password.

COMPLETE LIST OF GLOBAL PARAMETERS

Here is a list of all global parameters. See the section of each parameter for details. Note that some are synonyms.

bu: add printer command
bu: add share command
bu: add user script
bu: allow trusted domains
bu: announce as
bu: announce version
bu: auto services
bu: bind interfaces only
bu: browse list
bu: change notify timeout
bu: change share command
bu: character set
bu: client code page
bu: code page directory
bu: coding system
bu: config file
bu: deadtime
bu: debug hires timestamp
bu: debug pid
bu: debug timestamp
bu: debug uid
bu: debuglevel
bu: default
bu: default service
bu: delete printer command
bu: delete share command
bu: delete user script
bu: dfree command
bu: dns proxy
bu: domain admin group
bu: domain guest group
bu: domain logons
bu: domain master
bu: encrypt passwords
bu: enhanced browsing
bu: enumports command
bu: getwd cache
bu: hide local users
bu: hide unreadable
bu: homedir map
bu: host msdfs
bu: hosts equiv
bu: interfaces
bu: keepalive
bu: kernel oplocks
bu: lanman auth
bu: large readwrite
bu: lm announce
bu: lm interval
bu: load printers
bu: local master
bu: lock dir
bu: lock directory
bu: log file
bu: log level
bu: logon drive
bu: logon home
bu: logon path
bu: logon script
bu: lpq cache time
bu: machine password timeout
bu: mangled stack
bu: map to guest
bu: max disk size
bu: max log size
bu: max mux
bu: max open files
bu: max protocol
bu: max smbd processes
bu: max ttl
bu: max wins ttl
bu: max xmit
bu: message command
bu: min passwd length
bu: min password length
bu: min protocol
bu: min wins ttl
bu: name resolve order
bu: netbios aliases
bu: netbios name
bu: netbios scope
bu: nis homedir
bu: nt acl support
bu: nt pipe support
bu: nt smb support
bu: null passwords
bu: obey pam restrictions
bu: oplock break wait time
bu: os level
bu: os2 driver map
bu: pam password change
bu: panic action
bu: passwd chat
bu: passwd chat debug
bu: passwd program
bu: password level
bu: password server
bu: prefered master
bu: preferred master
bu: preload
bu: printcap
bu: printcap name
bu: printer driver file
bu: protocol
bu: read bmpx
bu: read raw
bu: read size
bu: remote announce
bu: remote browse sync
bu: restrict anonymous
bu: root
bu: root dir
bu: root directory
bu: security
bu: server string
bu: show add printer wizard
bu: smb passwd file
bu: socket address
bu: socket options
bu: source environment
bu: ssl
bu: ssl CA certDir
bu: ssl CA certFile
bu: ssl ciphers
bu: ssl client cert
bu: ssl client key
bu: ssl compatibility
bu: ssl hosts
bu: ssl hosts resign
bu: ssl require clientcert
bu: ssl require servercert
bu: ssl server cert
bu: ssl server key
bu: ssl version
bu: stat cache
bu: stat cache size
bu: strip dot
bu: syslog
bu: syslog only
bu: template homedir
bu: template shell
bu: time offset
bu: time server
bu: timestamp logs
bu: total print jobs
bu: unix password sync
bu: update encrypted
bu: use rhosts
bu: username level
bu: username map
bu: utmp directory
bu: valid chars
bu: winbind cache time
bu: winbind gid
bu: winbind separator
bu: winbind uid
bu: wins hook
bu: wins proxy
bu: wins server
bu: wins support
bu: workgroup
bu: write raw

COMPLETE LIST OF SERVICE PARAMETERS

Here is a list of all service parameters. See the section on each parameter for details. Note that some are synonyms.

bu: admin users
bu: allow hosts
bu: available
bu: blocking locks
bu: browsable
bu: browseable
bu: case sensitive
bu: casesignames
bu: comment
bu: copy
bu: create mask
bu: create mode
bu: default case
bu: delete readonly
bu: delete veto files
bu: deny hosts
bu: directory
bu: directory mask
bu: directory mode
bu: directory security mask
bu: dont descend
bu: dos filemode
bu: dos filetime resolution
bu: dos filetimes
bu: exec
bu: fake directory create times
bu: fake oplocks
bu: follow symlinks
bu: force create mode
bu: force directory mode
bu: force directory security mode
bu: force group
bu: force security mode
bu: force user
bu: fstype
bu: group
bu: guest account
bu: guest ok
bu: guest only
bu: hide dot files
bu: hide files
bu: hosts allow
bu: hosts deny
bu: include
bu: inherit permissions
bu: invalid users
bu: level2 oplocks
bu: locking
bu: lppause command
bu: lpq command
bu: lpresume command
bu: lprm command
bu: magic output
bu: magic script
bu: mangle case
bu: mangled map
bu: mangled names
bu: mangling char
bu: map archive
bu: map hidden
bu: map system
bu: max connections
bu: max print jobs
bu: min print space
bu: msdfs root
bu: only guest
bu: only user
bu: oplock contention limit
bu: oplocks
bu: path
bu: posix locking
bu: postexec
bu: postscript
bu: preexec
bu: preexec close
bu: preserve case
bu: print command
bu: print ok
bu: printable
bu: printer
bu: printer admin
bu: printer driver
bu: printer driver location
bu: printer name
bu: printing
bu: public
bu: queuepause command
bu: queueresume command
bu: read list
bu: read only
bu: root postexec
bu: root preexec
bu: root preexec close
bu: security mask
bu: set directory
bu: share modes
bu: short preserve case
bu: status
bu: strict locking
bu: strict sync
bu: sync always
bu: user
bu: username
bu: users
bu: utmp
bu: valid users
bu: veto files
bu: veto oplock files
bu: vfs object
bu: vfs options
bu: volume
bu: wide links
bu: writable
bu: write cache size
bu: write list
bu: write ok
bu: writeable

EXPLANATION OF EACH PARAMETER

add printer command (G)

With the introduction of MS-RPC based printing support for Windows NT/2000 clients in Samba 2.2, The MS Add Printer Wizard (APW) icon is now also available in the "Printers..." folder displayed a share listing. The APW allows for printers to be add remotely to a Samba or Windows NT/2000 print server.

For a Samba host this means that the printer must be physically added to the underlying printing system. The add printer command defines a script to be run which will perform the necessary operations for adding the printer to the print system and to add the appropriate service definition to the smb.conf file in order that it can be shared by smbd(8)

The add printer command is automatically invoked with the following parameter (in order:

bu: printer name
bu: share name
bu: port name
bu: driver name
bu: location
bu: Windows 9x driver location

All parameters are filled in from the PRINTER_INFO_2 structure sent by the Windows NT/2000 client with one exception. The "Windows 9x driver location" parameter is included for backwards compatibility only. The remaining fields in the structure are generated from answers to the APW questions.

Once the add printer command has been executed, smbd will reparse the smb.conf to determine if the share defined by the APW exists. If the sharename is still invalid, then smbd will return an ACCESS_DENIED error to the client.

See also delete printer command, printing, show add printer wizard

Default: none

Example: addprinter command = /usr/bin/addprinter .PP

add share command (G)

Samba 2.2.0 introduced the ability to dynamically add and delete shares via the Windows NT 4.0 Server Manager. The add share command is used to define an external program or script which will add a new service definition to smb.conf. In order to successfully execute the add share command, smbd requires that the administrator be connected using a root account (i.e. uid == 0).

When executed, smbd will automatically invoke the add share command with four parameters.

bu: configFile - the location of the global smb.conf file.
bu: shareName - the name of the new share.
bu: pathName - path to an **existing** directory on disk.
bu: comment - comment string to associate with the new share.

This parameter is only used for add file shares. To add printer shares, see the add printer command.

See also change share command, delete share command.

Default: none

Example: add share command = /usr/local/bin/addshare

add user script (G)

This is the full pathname to a script that will be run AS ROOT by smbd(8) under special circumstances described below.

Normally, a Samba server requires that UNIX users are created for all users accessing files on this server. For sites that use Windows NT account databases as their primary user database creating these users and keeping the user list in sync with the Windows NT PDC is an onerous task. This option allows smbdto create the required UNIX users ON DEMAND when a user accesses the Samba server.

In order to use this option, smbd must be set to security=server or security=domain and add user script must be set to a full pathname for a script that will create a UNIX user given one argument of %u, which expands into the UNIX user name to create.

When the Windows user attempts to access the Samba server, at login (session setup in the SMB protocol) time, smbdcontacts the password server and attempts to authenticate the given user with the given password. If the authentication succeeds then smbd attempts to find a UNIX user in the UNIX password database to map the Windows user into. If this lookup fails, and add user script is set then smbd will call the specified script AS ROOT, expanding any %u argument to be the user name to create.

If this script successfully creates the user then smbd will continue on as though the UNIX user already existed. In this way, UNIX users are dynamically created to match existing Windows NT accounts.

See also security, password server, delete user script.

Default: add user script = <empty string> Example: add user script = /usr/local/samba/bin/add_user %u

admin users (S)

This is a list of users who will be granted administrative privileges on the share. This means that they will do all file operations as the super-user (root).

You should use this option very carefully, as any user in this list will be able to do anything they like on the share, irrespective of file permissions.

Default: no admin users

Example: admin users = jason

allow hosts (S)

Synonym for hosts allow.

allow trusted domains (G)

This option only takes effect when the security option is set to server or domain. If it is set to no, then attempts to connect to a resource from a domain or workgroup other than the one which smbdis running in will fail, even if that domain is trusted by the remote server doing the authentication.

This is useful if you only want your Samba server to serve resources to users in the domain it is a member of. As an example, suppose that there are two domains DOMA and DOMB. DOMB is trusted by DOMA, which contains the Samba server. Under normal circumstances, a user with an account in DOMB can then access the resources of a UNIX account with the same account name on the Samba server even if they do not have an account in DOMA. This can make implementing a security boundary difficult.

Default: allow trusted domains = yes

announce as (G)

This specifies what type of server nmbd will announce itself as, to a network neighborhood browse list. By default this is set to Windows NT. The valid options are : "NT Server" (which can also be written as "NT"), "NT Workstation", "Win95" or "WfW" meaning Windows NT Server, Windows NT Workstation, Windows 95 and Windows for Workgroups respectively. Do not change this parameter unless you have a specific need to stop Samba appearing as an NT server as this may prevent Samba servers from participating as browser servers correctly.

Default: announce as = NT Server

Example: announce as = Win95

announce version (G)

This specifies the major and minor version numbers that nmbd will use when announcing itself as a server. The default is 4.2. Do not change this parameter unless you have a specific need to set a Samba server to be a downlevel server.

Default: announce version = 4.2

Example: announce version = 2.0

auto services (G)

This is a synonym for the preload.

available (S)

This parameter lets you "turn off" a service. If available = no, then ALL attempts to connect to the service will fail. Such failures are logged.

Default: available = yes

bind interfaces only (G)

This global parameter allows the Samba admin to limit what interfaces on a machine will serve SMB requests. If affects file service smbd(8)and name service nmbd(8)in slightly different ways.

For name service it causes nmbd to bind to ports 137 and 138 on the interfaces listed in the interfaces parameter. nmbd also binds to the "all addresses" interface (0.0.0.0) on ports 137 and 138 for the purposes of reading broadcast messages. If this option is not set then nmbd will service name requests on all of these sockets. If bind interfaces only is set then nmbd will check the source address of any packets coming in on the broadcast sockets and discard any that don't match the broadcast addresses of the interfaces in the interfaces parameter list. As unicast packets are received on the other sockets it allows nmbd to refuse to serve names to machines that send packets that arrive through any interfaces not listed in the interfaces list. IP Source address spoofing does defeat this simple check, however so it must not be used seriously as a security feature for nmbd.

For file service it causes smbd(8) to bind only to the interface list given in the interfaces parameter. This restricts the networks that smbd will serve to packets coming in those interfaces. Note that you should not use this parameter for machines that are serving PPP or other intermittent or non-broadcast network interfaces as it will not cope with non-permanent interfaces.

If bind interfaces only is set then unless the network address 127.0.0.1 is added to the interfaces parameter list smbpasswd(8) and swat(8)may not work as expected due to the reasons covered below.

To change a users SMB password, the smbpasswd by default connects to the localhost - 127.0.0.1 address as an SMB client to issue the password change request. If bind interfaces only is set then unless the network address 127.0.0.1 is added to the interfaces parameter list then smbpasswd will fail to connect in it's default mode. smbpasswd can be forced to use the primary IP interface of the local host by using its -r remote machine parameter, with remote machine set to the IP name of the primary interface of the local host.

The swat status page tries to connect with smbd and nmbd at the address 127.0.0.1 to determine if they are running. Not adding 127.0.0.1 will cause smbd and nmbd to always show "not running" even if they really are. This can prevent swat from starting/stopping/restarting smbd and nmbd.

Default: bind interfaces only = no

blocking locks (S)

This parameter controls the behavior of smbd(8)when given a request by a client to obtain a byte range lock on a region of an open file, and the request has a time limit associated with it.

If this parameter is set and the lock range requested cannot be immediately satisfied, Samba 2.2 will internally queue the lock request, and periodically attempt to obtain the lock until the timeout period expires.

If this parameter is set to false, then Samba 2.2 will behave as previous versions of Samba would and will fail the lock request immediately if the lock range cannot be obtained.

Default: blocking locks = yes

browsable (S)

See the browseable.

browse list (G)

This controls whether smbd(8)will serve a browse list to a client doing a NetServerEnum call. Normally set to true. You should never need to change this.

Default: browse list = yes

browseable (S)

This controls whether this share is seen in the list of available shares in a net view and in the browse list.

Default: browseable = yes

case sensitive (S)

See the discussion in the section NAME MANGLING.

Default: case sensitive = no

casesignames (S)

Synonym for case sensitive.

change notify timeout (G)

This SMB allows a client to tell a server to "watch" a particular directory for any changes and only reply to the SMB request when a change has occurred. Such constant scanning of a directory is expensive under UNIX, hence an smbd(8)daemon only performs such a scan on each requested directory once every change notify timeout seconds.

Default: change notify timeout = 60

Example: change notify timeout = 300

Would change the scan time to every 5 minutes.

change share command (G)

Samba 2.2.0 introduced the ability to dynamically add and delete shares via the Windows NT 4.0 Server Manager. The change share command is used to define an external program or script which will modify an existing service definition in smb.conf. In order to successfully execute the change share command, smbd requires that the administrator be connected using a root account (i.e. uid == 0).

When executed, smbd will automatically invoke the change share command with four parameters.

bu: configFile - the location of the global smb.conf file.
bu: shareName - the name of the new share.
bu: pathName - path to an **existing** directory on disk.
bu: comment - comment string to associate with the new share.

This parameter is only used modify existing file shares definitions. To modify printer shares, use the "Printers..." folder as seen when browsing the Samba host.

See also add share command, delete share command.

Default: none

Example: change share command = /usr/local/bin/addshare

character set (G)

This allows smbdto map incoming filenames from a DOS Code page (see the client code page parameter) to several built in UNIX character sets. The built in code page translations are:

bu: ISO8859-1 : Western European UNIX character set. The parameter client code page MUST be set to code page 850 if the character set parameter is set to ISO8859-1 in order for the conversion to the UNIX character set to be done correctly.
bu: ISO8859-2 : Eastern European UNIX character set. The parameter client code page MUST be set to code page 852 if the character set parameter is set to ISO8859-2 in order for the conversion to the UNIX character set to be done correctly.
bu: ISO8859-5 : Russian Cyrillic UNIX character set. The parameter client code page MUST be set to code page 866 if the character set parameter is set to ISO8859-5 in order for the conversion to the UNIX character set to be done correctly.
bu: ISO8859-7 : Greek UNIX character set. The parameter client code page MUST be set to code page 737 if the character set parameter is set to ISO8859-7 in order for the conversion to the UNIX character set to be done correctly.
bu: KOI8-R : Alternate mapping for Russian Cyrillic UNIX character set. The parameter client code page MUST be set to code page 866 if the character set parameter is set to KOI8-R in order for the conversion to the UNIX character set to be done correctly.

BUG. These MSDOS code page to UNIX character set mappings should be dynamic, like the loading of MS DOS code pages, not static.

Normally this parameter is not set, meaning no filename translation is done.

Default: character set = <empty string>

Example: character set = ISO8859-1

client code page (G)

This parameter specifies the DOS code page that the clients accessing Samba are using. To determine what code page a Windows or DOS client is using, open a DOS command prompt and type the command chcp. This will output the code page. The default for USA MS-DOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT releases is code page 437. The default for western European releases of the above operating systems is code page 850.

This parameter tells smbd(8) which of the codepage.XXX files to dynamically load on startup. These files, described more fully in the manual page make_smbcodepage(1), tell smbd how to map lower to upper case characters to provide the case insensitivity of filenames that Windows clients expect.

Samba currently ships with the following code page files :

bu: Code Page 437 - MS-DOS Latin US
bu: Code Page 737 - Windows '95 Greek
bu: Code Page 850 - MS-DOS Latin 1
bu: Code Page 852 - MS-DOS Latin 2
bu: Code Page 861 - MS-DOS Icelandic
bu: Code Page 866 - MS-DOS Cyrillic
bu: Code Page 932 - MS-DOS Japanese SJIS
bu: Code Page 936 - MS-DOS Simplified Chinese
bu: Code Page 949 - MS-DOS Korean Hangul
bu: Code Page 950 - MS-DOS Traditional Chinese

Thus this parameter may have any of the values 437, 737, 850, 852, 861, 932, 936, 949, or 950. If you don't find the codepage you need, read the comments in one of the other codepage files and the make_smbcodepage(1) man page and write one. Please remember to donate it back to the Samba user community.

This parameter co-operates with the valid chars parameter in determining what characters are valid in filenames and how capitalization is done. If you set both this parameter and the valid chars parameter the client code page parameter MUST be set before the valid chars parameter in the smb.conf file. The valid chars string will then augment the character settings in the client code page parameter.

If not set, client code page defaults to 850.

See also : valid chars, code page directory

Default: client code page = 850

Example: client code page = 936

code page directory (G)

Define the location of the various client code page files.

See also the printing parameter.

Default: Currently no default value is given to this string, unless the value of the printing parameter is SYSV, in which case the default is :

lp -i %p-%j -H hold

or if the value of the printing parameter is SOFTQ, then the default is:

qstat -s -j%j -h

Example for HPUX: lppause command = /usr/bin/lpalt %p-%j -p0

lpq cache time (G)

This controls how long lpq info will be cached for to prevent the lpq command being called too often. A separate cache is kept for each variation of the lpq command used by the system, so if you use different lpq commands for different users then they won't share cache information.

The cache files are stored in /tmp/lpq.xxxx where xxxx is a hash of the lpq command in use.

The default is 10 seconds, meaning that the cached results of a previous identical lpq command will be used if the cached data is less than 10 seconds old. A large value may be advisable if your lpq command is very slow.

A value of 0 will disable caching completely.

See also the printing parameter.

Default: lpq cache time = 10

Example: lpq cache time = 30

lpq command (S)

This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server host in order to obtain lpq -style printer status information.

This command should be a program or script which takes a printer name as its only parameter and outputs printer status information.

Currently eight styles of printer status information are supported; BSD, AIX, LPRNG, PLP, SYSV, HPUX, QNX and SOFTQ. This covers most UNIX systems. You control which type is expected using the printing = option.

Some clients (notably Windows for Workgroups) may not correctly send the connection number for the printer they are requesting status information about. To get around this, the server reports on the first printer service connected to by the client. This only happens if the connection number sent is invalid.

If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. Otherwise it is placed at the end of the command.

Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the lpq command as the $PATH may not be available to the server.

See also the printing parameter.

Default: depends on the setting of printing

Example: lpq command = /usr/bin/lpq -P%p

lpresume command (S)

This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server host in order to restart or continue printing or spooling a specific print job.

This command should be a program or script which takes a printer name and job number to resume the print job. See also the lppause command parameter.

If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. A %j is replaced with the job number (an integer).

Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the lpresume command as the PATH may not be available to the server.

See also the printing parameter.

Default: Currently no default value is given to this string, unless the value of the printing parameter is SYSV, in which case the default is :

lp -i %p-%j -H resume

or if the value of the printing parameter is SOFTQ, then the default is:

qstat -s -j%j -r

Example for HPUX: lpresume command = /usr/bin/lpalt %p-%j -p2

lprm command (S)

This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server host in order to delete a print job.

This command should be a program or script which takes a printer name and job number, and deletes the print job.

If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. A %j is replaced with the job number (an integer).

Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the lprm command as the PATH may not be available to the server.

See also the printing parameter.

Default: depends on the setting of printing Example 1: lprm command = /usr/bin/lprm -P%p %j Example 2: lprm command = /usr/bin/cancel %p-%j .TP machine password timeout (G) If a Samba server is a member of a Windows NT Domain (see the security=domain) parameter) then periodically a running smbd(8)process will try and change the MACHINE ACCOUNT PASSWORD stored in the TDB called private/secrets.tdb . This parameter specifies how often this password will be changed, in seconds. The default is one week (expressed in seconds), the same as a Windows NT Domain member server.

See also smbpasswd(8) , and the security=domain) parameter.

Default: machine password timeout = 604800

magic output (S)

This parameter specifies the name of a file which will contain output created by a magic script (see the magic script parameter below).

Warning: If two clients use the same magic script in the same directory the output file content is undefined.

Default: magic output = <magic script name>.out Example: magic output = myfile.txt

magic script (S)

This parameter specifies the name of a file which, if opened, will be executed by the server when the file is closed. This allows a UNIX script to be sent to the Samba host and executed on behalf of the connected user.

Scripts executed in this way will be deleted upon completion assuming that the user has the appropriate level of privilege and the file permissions allow the deletion.

If the script generates output, output will be sent to the file specified by the magic output parameter (see above).

Note that some shells are unable to interpret scripts containing CR/LF instead of CR as the end-of-line marker. Magic scripts must be executable as is on the host, which for some hosts and some shells will require filtering at the DOS end.

Magic scripts are EXPERIMENTAL and should NOT be relied upon.

Default: None. Magic scripts disabled.

Example: magic script = user.csh

mangle case (S)

See the section on NAME MANGLING

Default: mangle case = no

mangled map (S)

This is for those who want to directly map UNIX file names which cannot be represented on Windows/DOS. The mangling of names is not always what is needed. In particular you may have documents with file extensions that differ between DOS and UNIX. For example, under UNIX it is common to use .html for HTML files, whereas under Windows/DOS .htm is more commonly used.

So to map html to htm you would use:

mangled map = (*.html *.htm)

One very useful case is to remove the annoying ;1 off the ends of filenames on some CDROMs (only visible under some UNIXes). To do this use a map of (*;1 *;).

Default: no mangled map

Example: mangled map = (*;1 *;)

mangled names (S)

This controls whether non-DOS names under UNIX should be mapped to DOS-compatible names ("mangled") and made visible, or whether non-DOS names should simply be ignored.

See the section on NAME MANGLING for details on how to control the mangling process.

If mangling is used then the mangling algorithm is as follows:

bu: The first (up to) five alphanumeric characters before the rightmost dot of the filename are preserved, forced to upper case, and appear as the first (up to) five characters of the mangled name.
bu: A tilde "~" is appended to the first part of the mangled name, followed by a two-character unique sequence, based on the original root name (i.e., the original filename minus its final extension). The final extension is included in the hash calculation only if it contains any upper case characters or is longer than three characters.
Note that the character to use may be specified using the mangling char option, if you don't like '~'.
bu: The first three alphanumeric characters of the final extension are preserved, forced to upper case and appear as the extension of the mangled name. The final extension is defined as that part of the original filename after the rightmost dot. If there are no dots in the filename, the mangled name will have no extension (except in the case of "hidden files" - see below).
bu: Files whose UNIX name begins with a dot will be presented as DOS hidden files. The mangled name will be created as for other filenames, but with the leading dot removed and "___" as its extension regardless of actual original extension (that's three underscores).

The two-digit hash value consists of upper case alphanumeric characters.

This algorithm can cause name collisions only if files in a directory share the same first five alphanumeric characters. The probability of such a clash is 1/1300.

The name mangling (if enabled) allows a file to be copied between UNIX directories from Windows/DOS while retaining the long UNIX filename. UNIX files can be renamed to a new extension from Windows/DOS and will retain the same basename. Mangled names do not change between sessions.

Default: mangled names = yes

mangled stack (G)

This parameter controls the number of mangled names that should be cached in the Samba server smbd(8).

This stack is a list of recently mangled base names (extensions are only maintained if they are longer than 3 characters or contains upper case characters).

The larger this value, the more likely it is that mangled names can be successfully converted to correct long UNIX names. However, large stack sizes will slow most directory accesses. Smaller stacks save memory in the server (each stack element costs 256 bytes).

It is not possible to absolutely guarantee correct long filenames, so be prepared for some surprises!

Default: mangled stack = 50

Example: mangled stack = 100

mangling char (S)

This controls what character is used as the magic character in name mangling. The default is a '~' but this may interfere with some software. Use this option to set it to whatever you prefer.

Default: mangling char = ~

Example: mangling char = ^

map archive (S)

This controls whether the DOS archive attribute should be mapped to the UNIX owner execute bit. The DOS archive bit is set when a file has been modified since its last backup. One motivation for this option it to keep Samba/your PC from making any file it touches from becoming executable under UNIX. This can be quite annoying for shared source code, documents, etc...

Note that this requires the create mask parameter to be set such that owner execute bit is not masked out (i.e. it must include 100). See the parameter create mask for details.

Default: map archive = yes

map hidden (S)

This controls whether DOS style hidden files should be mapped to the UNIX world execute bit.

Note that this requires the create mask to be set such that the world execute bit is not masked out (i.e. it must include 001). See the parameter create mask for details.

Default: map hidden = no

map system (S)

This controls whether DOS style system files should be mapped to the UNIX group execute bit.

Note that this requires the create mask to be set such that the group execute bit is not masked out (i.e. it must include 010). See the parameter create mask for details.

Default: map system = no

map to guest (G)

This parameter is only useful in security modes other than security=share - i.e. user, server, and domain.

This parameter can take three different values, which tell smbd(8)what to do with user login requests that don't match a valid UNIX user in some way.

The three settings are :

bu: Never - Means user login requests with an invalid password are rejected. This is the default.
bu: Bad User - Means user logins with an invalid password are rejected, unless the username does not exist, in which case it is treated as a guest login and mapped into the guest account.
bu: Bad Password - Means user logins with an invalid password are treated as a guest login and mapped into the guest account. Note that this can cause problems as it means that any user incorrectly typing their password will be silently logged on as "guest" - and will not know the reason they cannot access files they think they should - there will have been no message given to them that they got their password wrong. Helpdesk services will hate you if you set the map to guest parameter this way :-).

Note that this parameter is needed to set up "Guest" share services when using security modes other than share. This is because in these modes the name of the resource being requested is not sent to the server until after the server has successfully authenticated the client so the server cannot make authentication decisions at the correct time (connection to the share) for "Guest" shares.

For people familiar with the older Samba releases, this parameter maps to the old compile-time setting of the GUEST_SESSSETUP value in local.h.

Default: map to guest = Never

Example: map to guest = Bad User

max connections (S)

This option allows the number of simultaneous connections to a service to be limited. If max connections is greater than 0 then connections will be refused if this number of connections to the service are already open. A value of zero mean an unlimited number of connections may be made.

Record lock files are used to implement this feature. The lock files will be stored in the directory specified by the lock directory option.

Default: max connections = 0

Example: max connections = 10

max disk size (G)

This option allows you to put an upper limit on the apparent size of disks. If you set this option to 100 then all shares will appear to be not larger than 100 MB in size.

Note that this option does not limit the amount of data you can put on the disk. In the above case you could still store much more than 100 MB on the disk, but if a client ever asks for the amount of free disk space or the total disk size then the result will be bounded by the amount specified in max disk size.

This option is primarily useful to work around bugs in some pieces of software that can't handle very large disks, particularly disks over 1GB in size.

A max disk size of 0 means no limit.

Default: max disk size = 0

Example: max disk size = 1000

max log size (G)

This option (an integer in kilobytes) specifies the max size the log file should grow to. Samba periodically checks the size and if it is exceeded it will rename the file, adding a .old extension.

A size of 0 means no limit.

Default: max log size = 5000

Example: max log size = 1000

max mux (G)

This option controls the maximum number of outstanding simultaneous SMB operations that Samba tells the client it will allow. You should never need to set this parameter.

Default: max mux = 50

max open files (G)

This parameter limits the maximum number of open files that one smbd(8)file serving process may have open for a client at any one time. The default for this parameter is set very high (10,000) as Samba uses only one bit per unopened file.

The limit of the number of open files is usually set by the UNIX per-process file descriptor limit rather than this parameter so you should never need to touch this parameter.

Default: max open files = 10000

max print jobs (S)

This parameter limits the maximum number of jobs allowable in a Samba printer queue at any given moment. If this number is exceeded, smbd(8)will remote "Out of Space" to the client. See all total print jobs.

Default: max print jobs = 1000

Example: max print jobs = 5000

max protocol (G)

The value of the parameter (a string) is the highest protocol level that will be supported by the server.

Possible values are :

bu: CORE: Earliest version. No concept of user names.
bu: COREPLUS: Slight improvements on CORE for efficiency.
bu: LANMAN1: First modern version of the protocol. Long filename support.
bu: LANMAN2: Updates to Lanman1 protocol.
bu: NT1: Current up to date version of the protocol. Used by Windows NT. Known as CIFS.

Normally this option should not be set as the automatic negotiation phase in the SMB protocol takes care of choosing the appropriate protocol.

See also the printing parameter.

Default: min print space = 0

Example: min print space = 2000

min protocol (G)

The value of the parameter (a string) is the lowest SMB protocol dialect than Samba will support. Please refer to the max protocol parameter for a list of valid protocol names and a brief description of each. You may also wish to refer to the C source code in source/smbd/negprot.c for a listing of known protocol dialects supported by clients.

If you are viewing this parameter as a security measure, you should also refer to the lanman auth parameter. Otherwise, you should never need to change this parameter.

Default : min protocol = CORE

Example : min protocol = NT1 # disable DOS clients

min wins ttl (G)

This option tells nmbd(8) when acting as a WINS server ( wins support = yes) what the minimum 'time to live' of NetBIOS names that nmbd will grant will be (in seconds). You should never need to change this parameter. The default is 6 hours (21600 seconds).

Default: min wins ttl = 21600

msdfs root (S)

This boolean parameter is only available if Samba is configured and compiled with the --with-msdfs option. If set to yes>, Samba treats the share as a Dfs root and allows clients to browse the distributed file system tree rooted at the share directory. Dfs links are specified in the share directory by symbolic links of the form msdfs:serverA\shareA,serverB\shareB and so on. For more information on setting up a Dfs tree on Samba, refer to msdfs_setup.html

See also host msdfs Default: msdfs root = no

name resolve order (G)

This option is used by the programs in the Samba suite to determine what naming services to use and in what order to resolve host names to IP addresses. The option takes a space separated string of name resolution options.

The options are :"lmhosts", "host", "wins" and "bcast". They cause names to be resolved as follows :

bu: lmhosts : Lookup an IP address in the Samba lmhosts file. If the line in lmhosts has no name type attached to the NetBIOS name (see the lmhosts(5)for details) then any name type matches for lookup.
bu: host : Do a standard host name to IP address resolution, using the system /etc/hosts , NIS, or DNS lookups. This method of name resolution is operating system depended for instance on IRIX or Solaris this may be controlled by the /etc/nsswitch.conf file). Note that this method is only used if the NetBIOS name type being queried is the 0x20 (server) name type, otherwise it is ignored.
bu: wins : Query a name with the IP address listed in the wins server parameter. If no WINS server has been specified this method will be ignored.
bu: bcast : Do a broadcast on each of the known local interfaces listed in the interfaces parameter. This is the least reliable of the name resolution methods as it depends on the target host being on a locally connected subnet.

Default: name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast .PP

Example: name resolve order = lmhosts bcast host .PP

This will cause the local lmhosts file to be examined first, followed by a broadcast attempt, followed by a normal system hostname lookup.

netbios aliases (G)

This is a list of NetBIOS names that nmbd(8)will advertise as additional names by which the Samba server is known. This allows one machine to appear in browse lists under multiple names. If a machine is acting as a browse server or logon server none of these names will be advertised as either browse server or logon servers, only the primary name of the machine will be advertised with these capabilities.

WARNINGS

Although the configuration file permits service names to contain spaces, your client software may not. Spaces will be ignored in comparisons anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem - but be aware of the possibility.

On a similar note, many clients - especially DOS clients - limit service names to eight characters. smbd(8) has no such limitation, but attempts to connect from such clients will fail if they truncate the service names. For this reason you should probably keep your service names down to eight characters in length.

Use of the [homes] and [printers] special sections make life for an administrator easy, but the various combinations of default attributes can be tricky. Take extreme care when designing these sections. In particular, ensure that the permissions on spool directories are correct.

VERSION

This man page is correct for version 2.2 of the Samba suite.

AUTHOR

The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.

The original Samba man pages were written by Karl Auer. The man page sources were converted to YODL format (another excellent piece of Open Source software, available at ftp://ftp.icce.rug.nl/pub/unix/ <URL:ftp://ftp.icce.rug.nl/pub/unix/>) and updated for the Samba 2.0 release by Jeremy Allison. The conversion to DocBook for Samba 2.2 was done by Gerald Carter

SMB.CONF

SMB.CONF

NAME

SYNOPSIS

FILE FORMAT

SECTION DESCRIPTIONS

SPECIAL SECTIONS

THE GLOBAL SECTION

THE HOMES SECTION

THE PRINTERS SECTION

PARAMETERS

VARIABLE SUBSTITUTIONS

NAME MANGLING

NOTE ABOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION

COMPLETE LIST OF GLOBAL PARAMETERS

COMPLETE LIST OF SERVICE PARAMETERS

EXPLANATION OF EACH PARAMETER

WARNINGS

VERSION

SEE ALSO

AUTHOR

SMB.CONF

SMB.CONF