Im relatively new to linux. I am building my first samba server for a three workstation system at home. It is behind two chained firewall/routers (one is essentially a switch for two of the computers).

I wanted to find out: what are the minimum services required for me to run this server. Do I need anything other than smb. Should I run any other services? I was to chicken to just shut them all off and find out. Besides, there is actually a lot of services running by default. Some of them are printer related (?cups) and I was thinking of leaving those on but I want to get the file server running first before I start using it for printer sharing (if I ever do).

First of all, it would be helpful to know what distribution you are running, so that people can tell you how to check what is running, shut things down, etc.

Beyond that, you don't need anything but Samba running to actually work as a file server for Windows clients. You should however have some method available for controlling the machine remotely, so the majority of people also run SSH on there with strong passwords and a proper configuration.

Samba also includes a web-based authentication application called SWAT, which is pretty nice, but is also a security risk since it requires you to authenticate over HTTP. I personally would not suggest running SWAT if you are very concerned about security.

Pretty much just smbd and nmbd for Samba. You could do a bare minimum OS install, add Samba and see where you end up. I've got Samba running on a NetBSD box and I think there's only a total of 9 processes running (just Samba, kernel stuff, and SSH!).

I found winbind/pam to be a godsend as it allows you to run just one authentication server.

sorry - ignore that for a 1 sever system.