Samba Advanced Settings

For installation instructions see Samba How To

The UCI configuration file is located at /etc/config/samba. Be extremely careful editing this file by hand - the samba shell interface (service samba restart) will ignore invalid options, but LuCI Services/Network Shares will bring up an error like this:

/usr/lib/lua/luci/dispatcher.lua:449: Failed to execute cbi dispatcher target for entry '/admin/services/samba'.

It is hence strongly recommended that you use LuCI to establish the initial configuration and then edit the template file (/etc/samba/smb.conf.template) via LuCI Edit Template tab or from the shell as needed.

If luci-app-samba not working or can't find in web gui - > type “rm /tmp/luci-indexcache” or restart router.

The config section type samba determines values and options relevant to the overall operation of samba. The following table lists all available options, their default value and respectively a short characterization. See smb.conf man page for further details.

These are the default settings for the common options:

config 'samba'
        option 'name' 'OpenWrt'
        option 'workgroup' 'OpenWrt'
        option 'description' 'Samba on OpenWrt'
        option 'charset' 'UTF-8'
        option 'homes' '0'
        option 'interface' 'loopback lan'

The daemons are up and running and recheable via NetBIOS. Now you only need to configure the directories you intend to make accesible to users in your LAN. This example assumes you attached a USB harddisk to the USB-Port and correctly mounted a partition. You can now choose to share the partition as a whole, or just individual directories on it. Fo each entry you need to create an individual config 'sambashare' section.

config 'sambashare'
        option 'name' 'Shares'
        option 'path' '/mnt/sda3'
#       option 'users' 'sandra'
        option 'guest_ok' 'yes'
        option 'create_mask' '0700'
        option 'dir_mask' '0700'
        option 'read_only' 'yes'

In addition to the UCI file (/etc/config/samba), modifications can be made to the /etc/samba/smb.conf.template file.

Modifications can be made to the /etc/samba/smb.conf.template file, based on /var/etc/smb.conf file, created by the samba service.

The full section from /var/etc/smb.conf should be added to /etc/samba/smb.conf.template and removed from UCI.

For example:

uci show samba | grep name
samba.@sambashare[0].name=over9000
sed -e '/\[over9000\]/,/^$/ !d' /var/etc/smb.conf >> /etc/samba/smb.conf.template
uci delete samba.@sambashare[0]
uci commit samba
service samba restart

In a second approach the samba service could also be edited for spit whatever to /var/etc/smb.conf associated with UCI.

For example, hack once:

sed -i -e '/dir_mask/p;s/dir_mask\|directory mask/browsable/g' /etc/init.d/samba

Then, anytime:

uci show samba | grep name
samba.@sambashare[0].name=over9000
uci set samba.@sambashare[0].browsable=no
uci commit samba
service samba restart
cat /var/etc/smb.conf

Samba can be configured at either share level access or user level access. At share level access all users on the network can access the share, and all files are shared with all users. At user level access a username and password are needed to access the share. By default Samba is configured for user level access.

These configurations have proven to work for some:

At share level access all users on the network can access the share, and all files are shared with all users. To set share level access change security = user to security = share in /etc/samba/smb.conf.template:

[global]
	netbios name = |NAME| 
	workgroup = |WORKGROUP|
	server string = |DESCRIPTION|
	syslog = 10
	encrypt passwords = true
	passdb backend = smbpasswd
	obey pam restrictions = yes
	socket options = TCP_NODELAY
	unix charset = ISO-8859-1
	local master = yes
	preferred master = yes
	os level = 20
	security = share
	guest account = nobody
	invalid users = root
	smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd

Then add a share to /etc/config/samba. Make sure that guest ok is set to yes

config 'samba'
	option 'name' 'openwrt'
	option 'workgroup' 'WORKGROUP'
	option 'description' 'openwrt'
	option 'homes' '1'
 
config 'sambashare'
	option 'read_only' 'no'
	option 'create_mask' '0700'
	option 'dir_mask' '0700'
	option 'name' 'name-of-share'
	option 'path' '/path/of/share'
	option 'guest_ok' 'yes'

This share should now be accessible by \\ip-adress-openwrt\name-of-share (windows, username and password can be anything).

At user level access a username and password are needed to access the share.

Steps:

To access a samba share with user level access there must be a user added to the system. Edit /etc/passwd and add a line for the new user “foo”. Choose a user id (the first number in the line) of 1000 or higher that does not exist yet.

root:!:0:0:root:/root:/bin/ash
nobody:*:65534:65534:nobody:/var:/bin/false
daemon:*:65534:65534:daemon:/var:/bin/false
foo:x:1001:1001:smb user:/dev/null:/bin/false

Edit /etc/group and add a line for the new user “foo”.

root:x:0:
nogroup:x:65534:
daemon:x:1:
foo:x:1001:foo

Note: keep in mind that the user(s) and group(s) utilized by Samba need to have the proper permissions for their shares, i.e. they need write access in order to write via smb.

smbpasswd -a foo

Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf.template and add null passwords = yes:

[global]
	netbios name = |NAME| 
	workgroup = |WORKGROUP|
	server string = |DESCRIPTION|
	syslog = 10
	encrypt passwords = true
	passdb backend = smbpasswd
	obey pam restrictions = yes
	socket options = TCP_NODELAY
	unix charset = ISO-8859-1
	local master = yes
	preferred master = yes
	os level = 20
	security = user
	null passwords = yes
	guest account = nobody
	invalid users = root
	smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd

Then add a share to /etc/config/samba. Make shure that guest ok is set to no

config 'samba'
	option 'name' 'openwrt'
	option 'workgroup' 'WORKGROUP'
	option 'description' 'openwrt'
	option 'homes' '1'
 
config 'sambashare'
	option 'read_only' 'no'
	option 'create_mask' '0700'
	option 'dir_mask' '0700'
	option 'name' 'name-of-share'
	option 'path' '/path/of/share'
	option 'guest_ok' 'no'

This share should now be accessible by \\ip-adress-openwrt\name-of-share (windows, correct username and password are needed).

If you use a trunk version and experience connection aborts take a look at this file /etc/samba/samba.conf.template and search for reset on zero vc = yes, remove this line or set it to no.

More information about this issue here: https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/9992

If your CPU is your samba bottleneck, disabling sendfile might help. See http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/speeding-up-the-samba-by-30.52240/