Using Samba, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6. Advanced Disk Shares

So far, the configurations we’ve discussed have been rudimentary and useful primarily for testing an initial server installation. In this chapter, you will see exactly why so many network administrators have chosen Samba as their interoperable file serving solution. Adding features such as Virtual File System (VFS) plug-ins and support for Microsoft Distributed File Systems (MS-DFS) to Samba’s already flexible and powerful file serving capabilities builds a solid foundation that is able to compete with and outperform many commercial CIFS implementations. By the end of this chapter, you will be well-versed in navigating tasks such as bridging the differences between Unix filesystems and Windows clients, configuring group shares, and managing ACLs on file and directories.

Special Share Names

In Chapter 4, we introduced three special section names: [global], [homes], and [printers]. These built-in section names have special meaning to Samba. There is a fourth special service that we have mentioned when listing shares using smbclient. This share, [IPC$], is provided by all CIFS servers, not just Samba, and is used for certain network operations such as listing file and printer shares. Other service names can have special meanings to clients. Consider this list of shares on a Windows Server 2003 host:

$ smbclient -L trinity -U Administrator%test Domain=[COLOR] OS=[Windows Server 2003 3790 Service Pack 1] Server=[Windows Server 2003 5.2] Sharename ...