Samba¶

Samba lets your Linux based server share files and folders on a Windows File Sharing Workgroup using the same protocol (SMB/CIFS), this is pretty useful when you need to share files between computers on your network. This also helps to allow your files to be accessed through the Internet (although it should only be done through a VPN for security purposes).

There is no official image for this service, so we'll use ghcr.io/servercontainers/samba.

Pre-Installation¶

We'll create a folder in the main user's home where all the service's data will be saved.

mkdir ~/services/networking/samba

Docker Compose¶

Samba will be run using Docker Compose. The content of the docker-compose.yml file is as follows:

services:
  server:
    image: ghcr.io/servercontainers/samba:smbd-only-latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - /media:/media
      - ~/:/home
    environment:
      TZ: America/Guayaquil

      SAMBA_CONF_LOG_LEVEL: 3
      AVAHI_DISABLE: disabled
      WSDD2_DISABLE: disabled

      ACCOUNT_foo: 'foo:1000:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:86C156FC198B358CCCF6278D8BD49B6A:[U          ]:LCT-65FF474F:'
      UID_foo: 1000

      SAMBA_VOLUME_CONFIG_downloads: |
        [downloads]
          comment = Downloads directory.
          path = /media/sata_2tb/Downloads
          available = yes
          read only = no
          browsable = yes
          writeable = yes
          create mask = 0777
          directory mask = 0777
          public = no
          guest ok = no
          hosts deny = 192.168.195.

      SAMBA_VOLUME_CONFIG_home: |
        [home]
          comment = Home.
          path = /home
          available = yes
          read only = no
          browsable = yes
          writeable = yes
          force user = foo
          public = no
          guest ok = no
          hosts deny = 192.168.195.

Feel free to edit the volumes and the volume configs at the bottom to your liking.

You may have noticed the weird hash for the env variable ACCOUNT_foo, you can generate one for your own use case by running:

docker run -it --rm ghcr.io/servercontainers/samba:smbd-only-latest create-hash.sh

This will generate a hash that you can use instead of adding your password in plaintext.

The shares are defined through environment variables prefixed by SAMBA_VOLUME_CONFIG, you can create as many as you need. Same story for ACCOUNT and UID which are used to define accounts with access to the share and their respective UID.

Post-Installation¶

We'll need to allow the service's port on our firewall.

sudo ufw allow 455/tcp

Running¶

Start up the service with:

docker compose up -d

That's it! The service will auto-start on system startup and restart on failure.