[Samba] Some doubts.

[Jason Stewart]

Hello, Joao.

I have been using Samba for awhile and I will try my best to answer some of 
your questions. If I do not have the complete answer, maybe someone else 
can elaborate also.

Here goes...

>1 When at the Linux side we create a directory to share what permissions 
>should we give?

Depends on who you want to share it with. If you want to allow everyone 
read/write access, permissions should be 666 (This would be the scenario 
for a true 'share' directory where everyone has access. The first '6 ' 
means owner read/write, the second means group read/write, and the last 
means 'everyone' read/write. 600 if you only want owner access to files. 
You can read more about how these permissions are calculated in any good 
UNIX book (or read the man page for chmod). There are directives in the 
smb.conf that can enforce certain permissions also.



>2 What is the benefit of having the shared directory on a XFS partition?

ACLs  with samba. If you compile samba --with-acl-support, you can modify 
acls on the share throught the windows NT/2000 dialog box. XFS is supposed 
to be a good journaling filesystem, although I don't know too much about it 
since I have never used it.



>3 I it possible on a subdirectory of a Samba share modify the permissions 
>so that they are different from the parent?

I'm not quite sure of what you mean here, but you can do that on any 
filesystem that I can think of. Do you mean that you want to create a new 
share that is nested under a share on an upper-level directory?



>4 Perhaps someone can advise me of what are the minimum Linux installation 
>for having just Samba and some administration?

It really depends on the distribution. It also depends on what utilities 
that you are using to do the administration. I can get a slackware 
installation with samba and some bare shell utilities installed in under 
100MB. I have tried to do the same with Red Hat Linux and haven't even come 
close so far.



>5 What is the best practice for updating a Samba installation?

I would definitely back everything up first. In my experience, Samba does 
not overwrite any of its application data when compiling it from the source 
and installing. I do not know if the RPMs back up the binaries first, since 
I do not use the RPM. Back up your all samba stuff like the directories 
where your browse lists are, your smb.conf, and your smbpasswd. You can't 
be too careful.

Make sure that when you are done upgrading, that you kill the old smdb/nmbd 
daemons and start them again (not just an HUP). I know that it sounds 
funny, but this one bit me in the butt awhile back.



>
>
>I think that by now is all, and I hope to get some help.

I hope that some of this helps you.



>
>
>Thanks in advance to the community,
>
>
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Joao Alexandre

Good luck with Samba and Linux.



>

Jason Stewart
Systems Administrator/Programmer
Right to Life of Michigan
Tel: (616)532-2300
Fax: (616)532-3461