Correct filesystem for use with Samba?

checkmate3001 · 02-26-2008, 04:03 AM

I have a (what I think is dumb) question...

Samba 3.0 uses a default filesystem of NTFS for shares (from reading the man page smb.conf(5)). My question is this:
Does this mean that all shares must be NTFS if I do not specify otherwise?

In other words - If I have an ext3 filesystem and I create a share and do not put it on a NTFS partition will it still work?

I'm thinking this may be a possible cause for some of my weird issues I'm currently having with samba. It is consistently inconsistent.

Thank you in advance.

billymayday · 02-26-2008, 04:27 AM

I don't quite follow what you are saying, but maybe this helps.

I have a number of shares on a Linux server that are seen from Windows machines. The linux server disks are formatted as ext3, even though though to Windows they look like normal network drives. No NTFS partition(s) on the server.

Does that help?

Simon Bridge · 02-26-2008, 04:29 AM

You can share files from any file system.

Quote:

If I have an ext3 filesystem and I create a share and do not put it on a NTFS partition will it still work?

You cannot put an ext3 file system on an ntfs partition (I defy you to try) because ntfs is not a partition type, it is a file system.

Quote:

I'm thinking this may be a possible cause for some of my weird issues I'm currently having with samba.

Why not just state the problem? This may be relevant.

teek · 02-26-2008, 05:09 AM

Samba does not care about the files system, when the Linux install can read the partition, so can Samba. Use whatever filesystem you like.

checkmate3001 · 02-26-2008, 09:47 AM

Thank you all for your help clearing that mudy subject up for me. I was a little confused why or for what purpose this parameter had:

Quote:

fstype (S)

This parameter allows the administrator to configure the string that specifies the type of filesystem a share is using that is reported by smbd(8) when a client queries the filesystem type for a share. The default type is NTFS for compatibility with Windows NT but this can be changed to other strings such as Samba or FAT if required.

Default: fstype = NTFS

Example: fstype = Samba

At anyrate - billymayday cleared it up rather simply.

I have posted before as to the problems I have been having. But I suppose no one has seen the problem before - or I just didn't describe it well. I got no advice in my previous posts.

Thank you guys.

teek · 02-26-2008, 01:57 PM

Indeed, the setting you are talking about is for how other computers will see your samba share, samba just pretends to be a windows machine with a windows filesystem. Whether it identifies as fat of ntfs has to do with the limitations of fat which for example can't store file permissions. This has nothing to do with your actual filesystem.