Although adding this feature isn’t exactly automatic (or, some would argue, user-friendly), it’s all just a matter of knowing what to look for. So here I am to explain to you how to add this feature and then how to share out those folders.

Bodhi Linux comes with a stripped down version of the Nautilus file manager. I have it on authority that Bodhi might be switching to PCManFM (I am hoping the sharing functionality will be either built in or available at that point, but at this point it is not a feature that is available.)

Installation

The easiest way to install everything you need for this feature is to follow these steps:

1. Open up Synaptic.
2. Search for “nautilus” (no quotes).
3. Mark nautilus-share for installation.
4. OK the dependencies necessary.
5. Search for “samba” (no quotes).
6. Mark samba for installation.
7. OK the dependencies necessary.
8. Click Apply.
9. Click Apply in the new window.
10. Allow the installation to complete.

Once the installation is complete, you will have to log out and log back in so the changes will take effect. If this were the full version of Nautilus, you could issue the command nautilus -q and the changes would automatically take effect. That command will only produce an error in this stripped-down version of Nautilus. So go through the process of logging out and logging back in.

Enable Sharing

Figure 1

At this point, everything should be exactly as you would expect. Fire up Nautilus (left-click the desktop to open the mouse menu and click Places > Home) to start the process of sharing folders.

Once Nautilus is open, right-click the folder you want to share and then select Sharing Options (see Figure 1). In the new window check off the Share Folder option. You can now configure any options you may want to add to the folder (such as Share Name, Comment, Allow others to create/delete, and Guest access). After you OK this you will be prompted to have the proper permissions assigned automatically – allow this to happen (otherwise you are going to have a hard time assigning permissions to that shared folder).

Figure 2

When the folder is shared out, it will be indicated with a different icon. As you can see, in Figure 2, the Music folder has been shared out and is denoted with the addition of a hand in the icon.

You should now be able to hit that shared out folder from any machine on your network that is able to hit shared folders.

Final thoughts

I am thrilled to see that Bodhi Linux is following in at least some of the footsteps of Ubuntu and making features like folder sharing available (and easily set up.) I do hope that when Bodhi makes the move to a new file manager, that the sharing of folders is included in the feature list.

In this article I will show you how to install and use this Samba browser on your Linux distribution.

What can pyNeighborhood do?

With this outstanding Samba scanning tool you can:

• Scan a network for Windows/Samba shares.
• Mount shares.
• Add machines.
• Remove machines.

And much more. One thing you will find that pyNeighborhood can NOT do is set up Samba for you. It is not a Samba tool other than a discovery/mount tool. With that said, let’s install.

Installation

Installation is simple, but there is one piece that the installation does not catch and pyNeighborhood will not fully function without. To install everything you need open up your Add/Remove Software utility and do the following:

1. Search for pyNeighborhood and mark the results for installation.
2. Search for mc (Midnight Commander) and mark the results for installation.
3. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. If you do not install Midnight Commander the mount command will not work successfully.

Usage

Now let’s use pyNeighborhood to scan a Windows share and mount the shares. I will warn you that pyNeighborhood is picky about user rights. To get around this instead of starting the application with the normal command pyNeighborhood, start the command with the help of gksudo like this:

gksudo pyNeighborhood

Figure 1

When you fire up pyNeighborhood the GUI will be very simple to get around. You shouldn’t have to set any options or do anything other than click Action > Scan in order to see your shares (see Figure 1). When the scan completes you should see any machine listed in your network that has an available share. If this doesn’t work, you might have to try adding a machine by clicking Action > Add Machine.

Once you have your machines listed you will need to mount them. To do so right click a share and select either Mount > as SMB or Mount > as CIFS. This will depend upon which you have installed.

Figure 2

Once you have these shares mounted they will show up in your Mounts tab (see Figure 2).

If you right click one of those mounts you can select either Unmount or File Manager. The File Manager has always given me issues. In the Preferences window you should be able to change the file manager from Midnight Commander (a VERY out of date curses-based file manager) to a more modern manager like Nautlius. But when you change the file manager the changes simply won’t stick and pyNeighborhood will continue on using MC. Because of this I just open up my file manager and navigate to the mount points and browse that way. By default the mount points will be /mnt/lan/. And don’t worry, pyNeighborhood will create those mount points and then remove them upon umounting.

Final thoughts

If you have been looking for a good tool to browse shares in Linux, pyNeighborhood is one of the best. It has a few wrinkles that still need to be ironed out, but you won’t find an easier tool to scan/mount/browse the Windows/Samba shares on your network.

One such tool is the gadmin-samba tool from the Gadmintools suite of GUI Linux administration tools. The Gadmintools suite allows you to easily setup Samba with the help of a well thought-out graphical interface. With this tool you should be able to have Samba up and running in no time. Of course, there is a bit of installation to tackle at first, but even that is simple. So, without further adieu, let’s get to work.

Installation

You can do this two ways:

• Install the entire Gadmin suite of tools.
• Install only the Samba tool.

You will also need to make sure Samba is installed as well as winbind. So open up Synaptic and search for the following:

• samba
• winbind
• gadmin-samba

Mark each of those for installation and they should pick up all of the necessary dependencies. Once installed, you are ready to rock.

Running Gadmin-Samba

Figure 1

To start the tool go to the System Tools sub-menu of the Applications menu and select Gadmin Samba. You will have to enter your sudo (or root user – depending upon your distribution) password. The main window will open with no configuration settings filled in (see Figure 1).

I will go through the setup one tab at a time.

Server settings

Although there are numerous settings to configure, you really only need configure a few of these to get a basic Samba server up and running.

• The servers host name: This is actually the Netbios name as configured in smb.conf.
• Workgroup: The workgroup your Samba server will be a part of.
• Security level: Setting this according to your needs (I prefer users on a smaller network).
• Allowed hosts and networks: Set this to eth0 lo (you might have to modify eth0 to reflect your network device name).

That’s it for this tab. Now we move on to the users tab.

Users

Figure 2

The Users tab is exactly what you would expect – a means to set up users for your Samba share. This section takes the place of having to use the smbpasswd command. From this tab (see Figure 2) you will need to fill out:

• Username: The name of the user.
• Password: The password for the user.
• Group: You must add your user to a group. You can safely add your user to the same name as the username. So if your username is joe, you can add this user to the joe group.
• Comment: For some odd reason, comments are required.
• Home directory. Set this to the users’ home directory.
• Shell: Most likely this will be /bin/sh

After you fill out this information click the Apply button. You are now ready to move on to the Shares tab.

Shares

Figure 3

When you click on the Shares tab you might be surprised to see some default values in place. If not, don’t worry, this is simple. Just configure the following:

• Share name: The name of the share you want to create.
• Shared directory: The directory you want to share out. By default, Gadmin Samba will want to share out /opt/samba. This is fine if you like, but you must remember that your normal users will not have write permission to this directory. That’s okay, you can add users to this directory by scrolling down and clicking the “Add access permissions” button and walking through the wizard. Just use caution with this. If you add users to the share, only those users will have access to the share. This is good security, but you must remember to add new users to this share should new users need access.

Once you have configured your users, you can click on the Configuration tab to see what your /etc/samba/smb.conf file will look like and click the Save button should it suffice. Once you have saved your configuration file, click the Activate button and Samba will up and running, ready for your users to connect.

Final thoughts

The Gadmintools Samba GUI has taken the complexity out of setting up a Samba server. Give this tool a try and see if you can’t get your Samba server up and running faster and with less hair pulling than you ever did with your manual setups.

After Samba is installed the smb.conf file will be around 533 lines long. Fear not. It’s much easier than it seems.

The smb.conf file is broken into sections. Each section will start with a line that looks like:

[TITLE]

Where TITLE is the actual title of the block. Each block represents either a configuration or a  share that other machines can connect to. You will, at minimum, have a global block and a single share.

Global

The global block is one of the more important blocks in your smb.conf file. This block defines the global configuration of your Samba server. This block begins with:

[global]

Within your blocks your configuration lines will be made up of:

option = value

statements.

The most important statements you will need in your global block are:
netbios name= NAME
workgroup = WORKGROUP_NAME
security = SECURITY_TYPE
encrypt passwords = YES/NO
smb passwd file = /path/to/smbpasswd
interfaces = ALLOWED_ADDRESSES

The values for each option above should be self explanatory. But there is one thing to note. If you are encrypting passwords you will need to add users (with passwords) with the smbpasswd command.
Within the global block one of the more important options is the security option. This option refers to authentication (how users will be able to log in). There are five different types of security:

• ADS – Active Directory Domain
• Domain – User verification through NT Primary or Backup Domain
• Server – Samba server passes on authentication to another server
• Share – Users do not have to enter username or password (until they try to access a specific directory)
• User – Users must provide valid username/password. This is the default.

Share Blocks

The next blocks will refer to individual shares. You will need a different block for each directory you want to share to Samba users. A typical share block will look like this:
[SHARE NAME]
comment = COMMENT
path = /path/to/share
writeable = YES/NO
create mode = NUMERIC VALUE
directory mode = NUMERIC VALUE
locking = YES/NO

Everything in caps above will be defined according to your needs. The tricky entries will be the create and directory modes. What this does is define permissions for any file created as well as the share directories. So the values will be in the form of 0700 or 0600 (depending upon your permission needs). Remember, you will need a share block for every directory you want to share out.

Naturally there are plenty of options that can be used in Samba. Many of these options will fall in the global block.

Printer Block

You can also define a block to share out printers. This block will start with:

[printers]

and will contain options like:
comment = COMMENT
path = /PATH/TO/PRINTER/SPOOL
browseable = YES/NO
guest ok = YES/NO
writable = YES/NO
printable = YES/NO
create mode = NUMERIC VALUE

Sample smb.conf

I have an external drive that I mount to /media/music and I share out to my home network with the following smb.conf file:
[global]
netbios name = MONKEYPANTZ
workgroup = MONKEYPANTZ
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
interfaces = 192.168.1.1/8
[wallen music]
comment = Music Library
path = /media/music
writeable = yes
create mode = 0600
directory mode = 0700
locking = yes

And that’s it. That is my entire smb.conf file. Granted I am only sharing out a single directory, but it shows how simple smb.conf can be to configure.