Samba Daemons

Samba installation is now trivial: Samba is now typically available via rpm

NEWS CONTENTS

• 200102 : Chapter 2: Installing Samba on a Unix System ( Using Samba ebook: )
• 200102 : Starting the Daemons Manually ( )
• 200102 : Automatic Startup ( )
• 200102 : Starting from inetd/xinetd ( )

Old News ;-)

Chapter 2: Installing Samba on a Unix System

Using Samba ebook:

Starting the Daemons Manually

If you're in a hurry, you can start the Samba daemons by hand. As root, enter the following commands:

service smbd start

service nmbd start
				

Samba will now be running on your system and is ready to accept connections. However, keep in mind that if either of the daemons exit for any reason (including system reboots), they must be restarted manually.

Automatic Startup

To have the Samba daemons started automatically when the system boots, add the commands listed in the previous section to your standard Unix startup scripts. The exact method varies depending on the flavor of Unix you're using.

System V Unix and most Linux distributions

With System V, things can get a little more complex. Depending on your Unix version, you might be able to get away with making a simple change to an rc.local file as with BSD Unix, but System V typically uses directories containing links to scripts that control daemons on the system. Hence, you need to instruct the system how to start and stop the Samba daemons. The first step to implement this is to modify the contents of the /etc/rc.d/init.d directory by adding an init script. The samba-3.0.x/packaging/sysv directory contains an example init script that should work on most System V based hosts. It is at least a place to begin making any local tweaks necessary for your system.

Assuming that we have installed this script using the name smb and set the execute permissions on it, we can now start and stop smbd and nmbd like this:

# /etc/init.d/smb start
Starting SMB services:
Starting NMB services:
# ps ax | grep mbd
 1268 ?        S      0:00 smbd -D
 1269 ?        S      0:00 smbd -D
 1270 ?        S      0:00 nmbd -D
 1465 pts/2    S      0:00 grep mbd
# /etc/init.d/smb stop
Shutting down SMB services:
Shutting down NMB services:

If you are having trouble modifying the existing SysV init script or are unable to write your own, check to see whether there is a packaged release of Samba (available from your Unix vendor or the Samba FTP site). If so, you might be able to extract a startup script from it to use as a starting point. Typically, this script doesn't change much (if at all) from release to release, so using a script from an older Samba version should not be a problem.

Finally, we need to add symbolic links to the smb script in the /etc/rc.d/rcn.d directories:

# for i in 3 5; do
> ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb /etc/rc.d/rc$i.d/S35smb
> done

# for i in 0 1 2 4 6; do
> ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb /etc/rc.d/rc$i.d/K35smb
> done
					

The first for loop, with a link name starting with an S (S35smb), causes Samba to be started when entering runlevels 3 or 5, which are the runlevels in which network file sharing (NFS) is normally enabled. The next for loop, with a link name starting with a K, causes Samba to be shut down when entering any of the other runlevels (0, 1, 2, 4, or 6).

The links starting with S are used to start the daemons, and the links starting with K are used for killing them. When the runlevel is changed, the links starting with K in the corresponding directory (e.g., the rc3.d directory for runlevel 3) are executed, followed by the links starting with S. If we wanted, we could have Samba restarted when switching between runlevels 3 and 5 by adding a K35smb link to each rc3.d and rc5.d directory.

The number after the K or S in the link names is used to set the order in which all the daemons with links in the directory are started or killed off. Get a long listing of the rc3.d or rc5.d directories to see how this is set up on your system. We use 35 to match the behavior of Red Hat's Samba RPM package. The important thing is to make sure that when starting Samba, all services that it requires are started before it. When shutting down, it is a good idea to shut down Samba before services it requires, to avoid excess error messages in the logfiles, but the shut down order is not as crucial.

Testing automatic startup

If you can afford a few minutes of downtime, reboot your system and again use the ps command to confirm that the smbd and nmbd daemons are running. And if you are managing a 24/7 server, we highly recommend that you find some downtime in which to reboot and perform this check. Otherwise, your next unscheduled downtime might surprise you with a mysterious absence of SMB networking services when the system comes up again!

Starting from inetd/xinetd

This way you can use TCP Wrappers for controlling connections. At the same time memory and disk space tend to be very cheap. This is probably one of the reasons why running the Samba daemons from the inetd meta-server has fallen into disuse. The other is that nmbd needs to maintain state when participating in network browsing elections. The inetd server is not really geared towards this type of long-term service. The best advice is to simply run smbd and nmbd as daemons using the methods previously discussed.

However, if you wish to start from inetd, first open /etc/services in your text editor. Add the following two lines if you don't already have them defined:

netbios-ns      137/udp
netbios-ssn     139/tcp

Next, edit /etc/inetd.conf. Look for the following two lines and add them if they don't exist. If you already have smbd and nmbd lines in the file, edit them to point at the new smbd and nmbd you've installed. Your brand of Unix might use a slightly different syntax in this file; use the existing entries and the inetd.conf manual page as a guide:

netbios-ssn stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/samba/sbin/smbd smbd
netbios-ns  dgram  udp wait   root /usr/local/samba/sbin/nmbd nmbd

Finally, kill any smbd or nmbd processes and send the inetd process a hangup (HUP) signal to tell it to reread its configuration file:

$ kill -TERM -a smbd
$ kill -TERM -a nmbd
$ kill -HUP -a inetd

After that, inetd should be listening on the two NetBIOS ports and will spawn the appropriate Samba daemon when it receives a packet destined for either port.

As we've pointed out before, modern Linux distributions and perhaps other Unix vendors supply xinetd rather than inetd. If you need to use xinetd, you must supply configuration files in the /etc/xinetd.d directory for both smbd and nmbd, as shown here:

## configuration file for smbd
## save as /etc/xinetd.d/netbios-ssn
service netbios-ssn
{
        disable         = no
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        wait            = no
        user            = root
        server          = /usr/local/samba/sbin/smbd
}

## configuration file for nmbd
## save as /etc/xinetd.d/netbios-ns
service netbios-ns
{
        disable         = no
        socket_type     = dgram
        protocol        = udp
        wait            = yes
        user            = root
        server          = /usr/local/samba/sbin/nmbd
}
 

Testing the Samba Daemons

We're nearly done with the Samba server setup. All that's left to do is to make sure that everything is working as we think it should. A convenient way to do this is to use the smbclient program to examine what the server is offering to the network. If everything is set up properly, you should be able to do the following:

$ smbclient -L localhost -N

Anonymous login successful
Domain=[GARDEN] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.22]

        Sharename      Type      Comment
        ---------      ----      -------
        test           Disk      For testing 
 
 only, please
        IPC$           IPC       IPC Service (Samba 3.0.22)
        ADMIN$         Disk      IPC Service (Samba 3.0.22)

        Server               Comment
        ---------            -------
        RAIN                 Samba 3.0.22

        Workgroup            Master
        ---------            -------
        GARDEN               RAIN

This example used an anonymous connection. But because we've already added a Samba account for lizard, we can also connect to and browse a specific share. Being greeted by the smb: \> is an indication of success.

$ smbclient //localhost/test -U lizard
Password: <enter password>
Domain=[GARDEN] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.22]
smb: \>

If there is a problem, don't panic! Try to start the daemons manually, and check the system output or the debug files at /usr/local/samba/var/log.smbd to see if you can determine what happened. If you think it might be a more serious problem, skip to Chapter 12 for help on troubleshooting the Samba daemons.

If it worked, congratulations! You now have successfully set up the Samba server with a disk share. It's a simple one, but we can use it to set up and test the Windows clients in the next chapter. Then we will start making it more interesting by adding services such as home directories, printers, and security, and by seeing how to integrate the server into a larger Windows domain.

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: March, 12, 2019