[SOLVED] Samba and Internet

Originally Posted by rkelsen Posted from Windows.

It's Librewolf 121.0-1. It does the "pretend I'm Windows" thing to resist finger printing or some such.

Yes, I would feel confident running Samba over the internet for a period of time and it is possible. There's a big difference from today's Samba and Windows networking from the Windows 9x era. Just make sure your passwords are set correctly, the "guest" user maps correctly, and your shares are pointing to a place you don't mind people accessing. Watch the logs, and there should be no problem with testing it out over an afternoon. For a more permanent solution I'd use either sftp or (pro)ftp but OP asked specifically about Samba.

A section of smb.conf might be like

[shared]
        comment = Windows applications
        read only = yes
        path = /srv/ftp/pub/operating-systems/windows
        guest ok = yes
        browseable = yes
        valid users = @users

Originally Posted by jayjwa Yes, I would feel confident running Samba over the internet for a period of time and it is possible.

Even if you were to try to do this you would probably find that your ISP blocks the traffic, because most of them block SMB by default.

The best way to access an SMB share over the internet is through a VPN. But now we're getting quite deep into a rabbit hole which OP didn't seem to want, and setting this up is nowhere near as easy as using a cloud-based service as suggested (more than once) above.

Originally Posted by Jason.nix I don't want this to be permanent. For a limited time only. I want to give the other party an address like MY_IP/Directory/File.zip and he\she can download the file. It does the same thing as a web server and [S]FTP server do, but without the web server and [S]FTP server.

What kind of time limits are you talking about, for the files or the server?

It still sounds like what you need is a simple web server with uploads via an SFTP server. The web server can be set up to do basic authentication and to use TLS for privacy. Or do you need for random people to be able to upload as well as download?

For an asynchronous file transfer too large for an email attachment, I have used services such as SendGB. Free for up to 5GB with the content automatically deleted after a period of time.

PS - I, for one, do not have or ever have had a gmail address.

Originally Posted by allend For an asynchronous file transfer too large for an email attachment, I have used services such as SendGB. Free for up to 5GB with the content automatically deleted after a period of time. PS - I, for one, do not have or ever have had a gmail address.

Never knew about SendGB, thanks for sharing.

Hello,
Thank you so much for all replies.
I found that this is not possible directly and I need a web or FTP server.

Originally Posted by Jason.nix Hello, Thank you so much for all replies. I found that this is not possible directly and I need a web or FTP server.

Make no mistake it IS possible. I worked for companies that did it. IT was even common. The thing is that we learned was that it was also really, REALLY stupid! All of those machines got powned, compromised, zombied, hacked, and often parts of the networks behind them. The protocol is insecure in nature, and even when well secured can act as a channel for detecting server vulnerabilities and gaining a network access channel that bypasses other security.

Even if you are very VERY careful and lucky and it never results in a successful intrusion DIRECTLY, it attracts the attention of criminal scanners that HERE is something worth attacking and someone STUPID enough to advertise it. At that point the worms and script-kiddies start crawling out of the woodwork and tings get "messy" and your ISP complains. That is not where you want to be.