hello sir, we are students and having some doubts regarding samba. Kindly help us.

As per definition samba is used to share files and printers between linux and other operating systems ( for example windows).For that we need to configure smb.conf accordingly.

But our problem is that we had a Linux system with samba related packages installed,but the smb and nmb service is stopped.Now we had one more Window98 machine ( on the same network as Linux machine).We had shared some folders on the windows machine.
Now on the Linux machine using the commands smbclient and smbmount we can access the shared windows folders and can upload or download also.
How this is possible i.e. smb service is not running even then we can access the shared folders of windows on Linux machine.

thanks

Hi,

You got yourselves a little mixed up with client server model.

The services (smb and nmb) you are talking about are actually the daemon processes that are required to be running on a machine if you want to access the shared resources on that machine

Now in your case you already have all the packages related to samba installed on your system.

It means you have the "client program" for samba which you need to communicate with a machine on which "the server program" is running. i.e. in your case you are using the samba client program to access the shared resources on the windows P.C. so there is no need that the server services (smb and nmb) be running on the linux machine.

Now if you wish to access the shared resources of that linux box from the windows box (or any other linux box) then you must have the server services i.e. smb and nmb running on the linux machine so that it can hear and reply to the requests of samba client processes over the network

thanks sir you explained so simple that we are able to understand the concept while just reading once.
Now we had setup one Linux machine acting as file server( with smb and nmb running).We had put one windows machine (on the workgroup as defined in smb.conf in File server.) and one more Linux machine .

From both Linux machines we can see the shared contents of windows machine .

From the windows machine we can now see the files shared in the File server.But we can not see the contents of second Linux machine.
Whether we had to change the smb.conf here also.If yes then it means we are making second Linux machine also as a file server.

Hello again guys. If you want to share files from a linux box to a windows box, you will need the samba server to do that. As you learned above, you can see windows from linux with just samba client, but to serve clients, you need to be a server. You can set the 2nd linux box up as a smb server as well, or it may be simpler to have all the sharing between OSs done by the single samba server.

What I mean by that is the linux box without samba server running can see the full-time samba server, so why not make your lives easier and put the files you want shared from the 2nd linux box onto the samba server in a new directory? That way all the computers on your network can see them, and the only thing you have to do is create a new directory on the samba server and populate it with the files from the 2nd linux box?

Peace,
JimBass

hello sir thanks again . we had done exactly like that and we are now able to transfer files between windows98 and Linux.

.But we wanted to tell you one thing that in the smb.conf we had set "security = share" .With this everything is fine.
In the windows machine if we goto ---Network Neighbourhood---Properties----Access Control---There are two options here. Either share level access OR user level access.

When on Linux machine (in smb.conf) security=share ,then we are selecting share level access on the windows.Now we can access the shared files of Samba server from windows as well as from the second Linux machine.

but if we select security=user in smb.conf on Samba server and then select (on the windows) the user level access.After that we restarted the windows machines.Now we can still access the Samba server on the windows machine.BUT
1. we can not create any shares on the windows machines so that we can access these shares from the Linux machines afterwards. Windows is giving some warning like " try again later".

2. From Second Linux machine we are not able to access the shares of Samba server( with security=user).

We are little bit confused with the Security options in smb.conf.
On the man page also we tried but could not understand.

Sir we want to know the basic difference between "Security level User and Share." in simple terms.
Also likewise we want to know the difference between Security level Server and Domain.

thanks