smb.conf(5) smb.conf(5)
NAME
smb.conf - The configuration file for the Samba suite
SYNOPSIS
The smb.conf file is a configuration file for the Samba suite.
smb.conf contains runtime configuration information for the Samba pro-
grams. The smb.conf file is designed to be configured and administered
by the swat(8) program. The complete description of the file format and
possible parameters held within are here for reference purposes.
FILE FORMAT
The file consists of sections and parameters. A section begins with the
name of the section in square brackets and continues until the next
section begins. Sections contain parameters of the form:
name = value
The file is line-based - that is, each newline-terminated line repre-
sents either a comment, a section name or a parameter.
Section and parameter names are not case sensitive.
Only the first equals sign in a parameter is significant. Whitespace
before or after the first equals sign is discarded. Leading, trailing
and internal whitespace in section and parameter names is irrelevant.
Leading and trailing whitespace in a parameter value is discarded.
Internal whitespace within a parameter value is retained verbatim.
Any line beginning with a semicolon (;) or a hash (#) character is
ignored, as are lines containing only whitespace.
Any line ending in a \ is continued on the next line in the customary
UNIX fashion.
The values following the equals sign in parameters are all either a
string (no quotes needed) or a boolean, which may be given as yes/no,
0/1 or true/false. Case is not significant in boolean values, but is
preserved in string values. Some items such as create masks are
numeric.
SECTION DESCRIPTIONS
Each section in the configuration file (except for the [global] sec-
tion) describes a shared resource (known as a share). The section name
is the name of the shared resource and the parameters within the sec-
tion define the shares attributes.
There are three special sections, [global], [homes] and [printers],
which are described under special sections. The following notes apply
to ordinary section descriptions.
A share consists of a directory to which access is being given plus a
description of the access rights which are granted to the user of the
service. Some housekeeping options are also specifiable.
Sections are either file share services (used by the client as an
extension of their native file systems) or printable services (used by
the client to access print services on the host running the server).
Sections may be designated guest services, in which case no password is
required to access them. A specified UNIX guest account is used to
define access privileges in this case.
Sections other than guest services will require a password to access
them. The client provides the username. As older clients only provide
passwords and not usernames, you may specify a list of usernames to
check against the password using the user = option in the share defini-
tion. For modern clients such as Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000, this should
not be necessary.
The access rights granted by the server are masked by the access rights
granted to the specified or guest UNIX user by the host system. The
server does not grant more access than the host system grants.
The following sample section defines a file space share. The user has
write access to the path /home/bar. The share is accessed via the share
name foo:
[foo]
path = /home/bar
read only = no
The following sample section defines a printable share. The share is
read-only, but printable. That is, the only write access permitted is
via calls to open, write to and close a spool file. The guest ok param-
eter means access will be permitted as the default guest user (speci-
fied elsewhere):
[aprinter]
path = /usr/spool/public
read only = yes
printable = yes
guest ok = yes
SPECIAL SECTIONS
The [global] section
Parameters in this section apply to the server as a whole, or are
defaults for sections that do not specifically define certain items.
See the notes under PARAMETERS for more information.
The [homes] section
If a section called [homes] is included in the configuration file, ser-
vices connecting clients to their home directories can be created on
the fly by the server.
When the connection request is made, the existing sections are scanned.
If a match is found, it is used. If no match is found, the requested
section name is treated as a username and looked up in the local pass-
word file. If the name exists and the correct password has been given,
a share is created by cloning the [homes] section.
Some modifications are then made to the newly created share:
o The share name is changed from homes to the located username.
o If no path was given, the path is set to the user's home directory.
If you decide to use a path = line in your [homes] section, it may be
useful to use the %S macro. For example:
path = /data/pchome/%S
is useful if you have different home directories for your PCs than for
UNIX access.
This is a fast and simple way to give a large number of clients access
to their home directories with a minimum of fuss.
A similar process occurs if the requested section name is homes, except
that the share name is not changed to that of the requesting user. This
method of using the [homes] section works well if different users share
a client PC.
The [homes] section can specify all the parameters a normal service
section can specify, though some make more sense than others. The fol-
lowing is a typical and suitable [homes] section:
[homes]
read only = no
An important point is that if guest access is specified in the [homes]
section, all home directories will be visible to all clients without a
password. In the very unlikely event that this is actually desirable,
it is wise to also specify read only access.
The browseable flag for auto home directories will be inherited from
the global browseable flag, not the [homes] browseable flag. This is
useful as it means setting browseable = no in the [homes] section will
hide the [homes] share but make any auto home directories visible.
The [printers] section
This section works like [homes], but for printers.
If a [printers] section occurs in the configuration file, users are
able to connect to any printer specified in the local host's printcap
file.
When a connection request is made, the existing sections are scanned.
If a match is found, it is used. If no match is found, but a [homes]
section exists, it is used as described above. Otherwise, the requested
section name is treated as a printer name and the appropriate printcap
file is scanned to see if the requested section name is a valid printer
share name. If a match is found, a new printer share is created by
cloning the [printers] section.
A few modifications are then made to the newly created share:
o The share name is set to the located printer name
o If no printer name was given, the printer name is set to the located
printer name
o If the share does not permit guest access and no username was given,
the username is set to the located printer name.
The [printers] service MUST be printable - if you specify otherwise,
the server will refuse to load the configuration file.
Typically the path specified is that of a world-writeable spool direc-
tory with the sticky bit set on it. A typical [printers] entry looks
like this:
[printers]
path = /usr/spool/public
guest ok = yes
printable = yes
All aliases given for a printer in the printcap file are legitimate
printer names as far as the server is concerned. If your printing sub-
system doesn't work like that, you will have to set up a pseudo-print-
cap. This is a file consisting of one or more lines like this:
alias|alias|alias|alias...
Each alias should be an acceptable printer name for your printing sub-
system. In the [global] section, specify the new file as your printcap.
The server will only recognize names found in your pseudo-printcap,
which of course can contain whatever aliases you like. The same tech-
nique could be used simply to limit access to a subset of your local
printers.
An alias, by the way, is defined as any component of the first entry of
a printcap record. Records are separated by newlines, components (if
there are more than one) are separated by vertical bar symbols (|).
Note
On SYSV systems which use lpstat to determine what printers are defined
on the system you may be able to use printcap name = lpstat to automat-
ically obtain a list of printers. See the printcap name option for more
details.
USERSHARES
Starting with Samba version 3.0.23 the capability for non-root users to
add, modify, and delete their own share definitions has been added.
This capability is called usershares and is controlled by a set of
parameters in the [global] section of the smb.conf. The relevant param-
eters are :
usershare allow guests
Controls if usershares can permit guest access.
usershare max shares
Maximum number of user defined shares allowed.
usershare owner only
If set only directories owned by the sharing user can be shared.
usershare path
Points to the directory containing the user defined share defini-
tions. The filesystem permissions on this directory control who can
create user defined shares.
usershare prefix allow list
Comma-separated list of absolute pathnames restricting what directo-
ries can be shared. Only directories below the pathnames in this
list are permitted.
usershare prefix deny list
Comma-separated list of absolute pathnames restricting what directo-
ries can be shared. Directories below the pathnames in this list are
prohibited.
usershare template share
Names a pre-existing share used as a template for creating new user-
shares. All other share parameters not specified in the user defined
share definition are copied from this named share.
To allow members of the UNIX group foo to create user defined shares,
create the directory to contain the share definitions as follows:
Become root:
mkdir /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares
chgrp foo /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares
chmod 1770 /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares
Then add the parameters
usershare path = /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares
usershare max shares = 10 # (or the desired number of shares)
to the global section of your smb.conf. Members of the group foo may
then manipulate the user defined shares using the following commands.
net usershare add sharename path [comment] [acl] [guest_ok=[y|n]]
To create or modify (overwrite) a user defined share.
net usershare delete sharename
To delete a user defined share.
net usershare list wildcard-sharename
To list user defined shares.
net usershare info wildcard-sharename
To print information about user defined shares.
PARAMETERS
Parameters define the specific attributes of sections.
Some parameters are specific to the [global] section (e.g., security).
Some parameters are usable in all sections (e.g., create mask). All
others are permissible only in normal sections. For the purposes of the
following descriptions the [homes] and [printers] sections will be con-
sidered normal. The letter G in parentheses indicates that a parameter
is specific to the [global] section. The letter S indicates that a
parameter can be specified in a service specific section. All S parame-
ters can also be specified in the [global] section - in which case they
will define the default behavior for all services.
Parameters are arranged here in alphabetical order - this may not cre-
ate best bedfellows, but at least you can find them! Where there are
synonyms, the preferred synonym is described, others refer to the pre-
ferred synonym.
VARIABLE SUBSTITUTIONS
Many of the strings that are settable in the config file can take sub-
stitutions. For example the option path = /tmp/%u is interpreted as
path = /tmp/john if the user connected with the username john.
These substitutions are mostly noted in the descriptions below, but
there are some general substitutions which apply whenever they might be
relevant. These are:
%U
session username (the username that the client wanted, not necessar-
ily the same as the one they got).
%G
primary group name of %U.
%h
the Internet hostname that Samba is running on.
%m
the NetBIOS name of the client machine (very useful).
This parameter is not available when Samba listens on port 445, as
clients no longer send this information. If you use this macro in an
include statement on a domain that has a Samba domain controller be
sure to set in the [global] section smb ports = 139. This will cause
Samba to not listen on port 445 and will permit include functional-
ity to function as it did with Samba 2.x.
%L
the NetBIOS name of the server. This allows you to change your con-
fig based on what the client calls you. Your server can have a dual
personality.
%M
the Internet name of the client machine.
%R
the selected protocol level after protocol negotiation. It can be
one of CORE, COREPLUS, LANMAN1, LANMAN2 or NT1.
%d
the process id of the current server process.
%a
the architecture of the remote machine. It currently recognizes
Samba (Samba), the Linux CIFS file system (CIFSFS), OS/2, (OS2),
Windows for Workgroups (WfWg), Windows 9x/ME (Win95), Windows NT
(WinNT), Windows 2000 (Win2K), Windows XP (WinXP), and Windows 2003
(Win2K3). Anything else will be known as UNKNOWN.
%I
the IP address of the client machine.
%i
the local IP address to which a client connected.
%T
the current date and time.
%D
name of the domain or workgroup of the current user.
%w
the winbind separator.
%$(envvar)
the value of the environment variable envar.
The following substitutes apply only to some configuration options
(only those that are used when a connection has been established):
%S
the name of the current service, if any.
%P
the root directory of the current service, if any.
%u
username of the current service, if any.
%g
primary group name of %u.
%H
the home directory of the user given by %u.
%N
the name of your NIS home directory server. This is obtained from
your NIS auto.map entry. If you have not compiled Samba with the
--with-automount option, this value will be the same as %L.
%p
the path of the service's home directory, obtained from your NIS
auto.map entry. The NIS auto.map entry is split up as %N:%p.
There are some quite creative things that can be done with these sub-
stitutions and other smb.conf options.
NAME MANGLING
Samba supports name mangling so that DOS and Windows clients can use
files that don't conform to the 8.3 format. It can also be set to
adjust the case of 8.3 format filenames.
There are several options that control the way mangling is performed,
and they are grouped here rather than listed separately. For the
defaults look at the output of the testparm program.
These options can be set separately for each service.
The options are:
case sensitive = yes/no/auto
controls whether filenames are case sensitive. If they aren't, Samba
must do a filename search and match on passed names. The default
setting of auto allows clients that support case sensitive filenames
(Linux CIFSVFS and smbclient 3.0.5 and above currently) to tell the
Samba server on a per-packet basis that they wish to access the file
system in a case-sensitive manner (to support UNIX case sensitive
semantics). No Windows or DOS system supports case-sensitive file-
name so setting this option to auto is that same as setting it to no
for them. Default auto.
default case = upper/lower
controls what the default case is for new filenames (ie. files that
don't currently exist in the filesystem). Default lower. IMPORTANT
NOTE: This option will be used to modify the case of all incoming
client filenames, not just new filenames if the options case sensi-
tive = yes, preserve case = No, short preserve case = No are set.
This change is needed as part of the optimisations for directories
containing large numbers of files.
preserve case = yes/no
controls whether new files (ie. files that don't currently exist in
the filesystem) are created with the case that the client passes, or
if they are forced to be the default case. Default yes.
short preserve case = yes/no
controls if new files (ie. files that don't currently exist in the
filesystem) which conform to 8.3 syntax, that is all in upper case
and of suitable length, are created upper case, or if they are
forced to be the default case. This option can be used with preserve
case = yes to permit long filenames to retain their case, while
short names are lowercased. Default yes.
By default, Samba 3.0 has the same semantics as a Windows NT server, in
that it is case insensitive but case preserving. As a special case for
directories with large numbers of files, if the case options are set as
follows, "case sensitive = yes", "case preserve = no", "short preserve
case = no" then the "default case" option will be applied and will mod-
ify all filenames sent from the client when accessing this share.
NOTE ABOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION
There are a number of ways in which a user can connect to a service.
The server uses the following steps in determining if it will allow a
connection to a specified service. If all the steps fail, the connec-
tion request is rejected. However, if one of the steps succeeds, the
following steps are not checked.
If the service is marked guest only = yes and the server is running
with share-level security (security = share, steps 1 to 5 are skipped.
1. If the client has passed a username/password pair and that user-
name/password pair is validated by the UNIX system's password pro-
grams, the connection is made as that username. This includes the
\\server\service%username method of passing a username.
2. If the client has previously registered a username with the system
and now supplies a correct password for that username, the connec-
tion is allowed.
3. The client's NetBIOS name and any previously used usernames are
checked against the supplied password. If they match, the connection
is allowed as the corresponding user.
4. If the client has previously validated a username/password pair with
the server and the client has passed the validation token, that
username is used.
5. If a user = field is given in the smb.conf file for the service and
the client has supplied a password, and that password matches
(according to the UNIX system's password checking) with one of the
usernames from the user = field, the connection is made as the user-
name in the user = line. If one of the usernames in the user = list
begins with a @, that name expands to a list of names in the group
of the same name.
6. If the service is a guest service, a connection is made as the user-
name given in the guest account = for the service, irrespective of
the supplied password.
EXPLANATION OF EACH PARAMETER
abort shutdown script (G)
This a full path name to a script called by smbd(8) that should stop
a shutdown procedure issued by the shutdown script.
If the connected user posseses the SeRemoteShutdownPrivilege, right,
this command will be run as user.
Default: abort shutdown script = ""
Example: abort shutdown script = /sbin/shutdown -c
acl check permissions (S)
This boolean parameter controls what smbd(8)does on receiving a pro-
tocol request of "open for delete" from a Windows client. If a Win-
dows client doesn't have permissions to delete a file then they
expect this to be denied at open time. POSIX systems normally only
detect restrictions on delete by actually attempting to delete the
file or directory. As Windows clients can (and do) "back out" a
delete request by unsetting the "delete on close" bit Samba cannot
delete the file immediately on "open for delete" request as we can-
not restore such a deleted file. With this parameter set to true
(the default) then smbd checks the file system permissions directly
on "open for delete" and denies the request without actually delet-
ing the file if the file system permissions would seem to deny it.
This is not perfect, as it's possible a user could have deleted a
file without Samba being able to check the permissions correctly,
but it is close enough to Windows semantics for mostly correct be-
haviour. Samba will correctly check POSIX ACL semantics in this
case.
If this parameter is set to "false" Samba doesn't check permissions
on "open for delete" and allows the open. If the user doesn't have
permission to delete the file this will only be discovered at close
time, which is too late for the Windows user tools to display an
error message to the user. The symptom of this is files that appear
to have been deleted "magically" re-appearing on a Windows explorer
refersh. This is an extremely advanced protocol option which should
not need to be changed. This parameter was introduced in its final
form in 3.0.21, an earlier version with slightly different semantics
was introduced in 3.0.20. That older version is not documented here.
Default: acl check permissions = True
acl compatibility (S)
This parameter specifies what OS ACL semantics should be compatible
with. Possible values are winnt for Windows NT 4, win2k for Windows
2000 and above and auto. If you specify auto, the value for this
parameter will be based upon the version of the client. There should
be no reason to change this parameter from the default.
Default: acl compatibility = Auto
Example: acl compatibility = win2k
acl group control (S)
In a POSIX filesystem, only the owner of a file or directory and the
superuser can modify the permissions and ACLs on a file. If this
parameter is set, then Samba overrides this restriction, and also
allows the primary group owner of a file or directory to modify the
permissions and ACLs on that file.
On a Windows server, groups may be the owner of a file or directory
- thus allowing anyone in that group to modify the permissions on
it. This allows the delegation of security controls on a point in
the filesystem to the group owner of a directory and anything below
it also owned by that group. This means there are multiple people
with permissions to modify ACLs on a file or directory, easing man-
agability.
This parameter allows Samba to also permit delegation of the control
over a point in the exported directory hierarchy in much the same
was as Windows. This allows all members of a UNIX group to control
the permissions on a file or directory they have group ownership on.
This parameter is best used with the inherit owner option and also
on on a share containing directories with the UNIX setgid bit bit
set on them, which causes new files and directories created within
it to inherit the group ownership from the containing directory.
This is parameter has been marked deprecated in Samba 3.0.23. The
same behavior is now implemented by the dos filemode option.
Default: acl group control = no
acl map full control (S)
This boolean parameter controls whether smbd(8)maps a POSIX ACE
entry of "rwx" (read/write/execute), the maximum allowed POSIX per-
mission set, into a Windows ACL of "FULL CONTROL". If this parameter
is set to true any POSIX ACE entry of "rwx" will be returned in a
Windows ACL as "FULL CONTROL", is this parameter is set to false any
POSIX ACE entry of "rwx" will be returned as the specific Windows
ACL bits representing read, write and execute.
Default: acl map full control = True
add group script (G)
This is the full pathname to a script that will be run AS ROOT by
smbd(8) when a new group is requested. It will expand any %g to the
group name passed. This script is only useful for installations
using the Windows NT domain administration tools. The script is free
to create a group with an arbitrary name to circumvent unix group
name restrictions. In that case the script must print the numeric
gid of the created group on stdout.
Default: add group script =
Example: add group script = /usr/sbin/groupadd %g
add machine script (G)
This is the full pathname to a script that will be run by smbd(8)
when a machine is added to Samba's domain and a Unix account match-
ing the machine's name appended with a "$" does not already exist.
This option is very similar to the add user script, and likewise
uses the %u substitution for the account name. Do not use the %m
substitution.
Default: add machine script =
Example: add machine script = /usr/sbin/adduser -n -g machines -c
Machine -d /var/lib/nobody -s /bin/false %u
add port command (G)
Samba 3.0.23 introduces support for adding printer ports remotely
using the Windows "Add Standard TCP/IP Port Wizard". This option
defines an external program to be executed when smbd receives a
request to add a new Port to the system. he script is passed two
parameters:
o port name
o device URI
The deviceURI is in the for of socket://<hostname>[:<portnumber>]
or lpd://<hostname>/<queuename>.
Default: add port command =
Example: add port command = /etc/samba/scripts/addport.sh
add printer command (G)
With the introduction of MS-RPC based printing support for Windows
NT/2000 clients in Samba 2.2, The MS Add Printer Wizard (APW) icon
is now also available in the "Printers..." folder displayed a share
listing. The APW allows for printers to be add remotely to a Samba
or Windows NT/2000 print server.
For a Samba host this means that the printer must be physically
added to the underlying printing system. The add printer command
defines a script to be run which will perform the necessary opera-
tions for adding the printer to the print system and to add the
appropriate service definition to the smb.conf file in order that it
can be shared by smbd(8).
The addprinter command is automatically invoked with the following
parameter (in order):
o printer name
o share name
o port name
o driver name
o location
o Windows 9x driver location
All parameters are filled in from the PRINTER_INFO_2 structure
sent by the Windows NT/2000 client with one exception. The "Win-
dows 9x driver location" parameter is included for backwards com-
patibility only. The remaining fields in the structure are gener-
ated from answers to the APW questions.
Once the addprinter command has been executed, smbd will reparse
the
smb.conf to determine if the share defined by the APW exists. If
the sharename is still invalid, then smbd will return an
ACCESS_DENIED error to the client.
The "add printer command" program can output a single line of
text, which Samba will set as the port the new printer is con-
nected to. If this line isn't output, Samba won't reload its
printer shares.
Default: add printer command =
Example: add printer command = /usr/bin/addprinter
add share command (G)
Samba 2.2.0 introduced the ability to dynamically add and delete
shares via the Windows NT 4.0 Server Manager. The add share command
is used to define an external program or script which will add a new
service definition to smb.conf. In order to successfully execute the
add share command, smbd requires that the administrator be connected
using a root account (i.e. uid == 0).
When executed, smbd will automatically invoke the add share command
with five parameters.
o configFile - the location of the global smb.conf file.
o shareName - the name of the new share.
o pathName - path to an **existing** directory on disk.
o comment - comment string to associate with the new share.
o max connections Number of maximum simultaneous connections to
this share.
This parameter is only used for add file shares. To add printer
shares, see the addprinter command.
Default: add share command =
Example: add share command = /usr/local/bin/addshare
add user script (G)
This is the full pathname to a script that will be run AS ROOT by
smbd(8) under special circumstances described below.
Normally, a Samba server requires that UNIX users are created for
all users accessing files on this server. For sites that use Windows
NT account databases as their primary user database creating these
users and keeping the user list in sync with the Windows NT PDC is
an onerous task. This option allows smbd to create the required UNIX
users ON DEMAND when a user accesses the Samba server.
In order to use this option, smbd(8) must NOT be set to security =
share and add user script must be set to a full pathname for a
script that will create a UNIX user given one argument of %u, which
expands into the UNIX user name to create.
When the Windows user attempts to access the Samba server, at login
(session setup in the SMB protocol) time, smbd(8) contacts the pass-
word server and attempts to authenticate the given user with the
given password. If the authentication succeeds then smbd attempts to
find a UNIX user in the UNIX password database to map the Windows
user into. If this lookup fails, and add user script is set then
smbd will call the specified script AS ROOT, expanding any %u argu-
ment to be the user name to create.
If this script successfully creates the user then smbd will continue
on as though the UNIX user already existed. In this way, UNIX users
are dynamically created to match existing Windows NT accounts.
See also security, password server, delete user script.
Default: add user script =
Example: add user script = /usr/local/samba/bin/add_user %u
add user to group script (G)
Full path to the script that will be called when a user is added to
a group using the Windows NT domain administration tools. It will be
run by smbd(8) AS ROOT. Any %g will be replaced with the group name
and any %u will be replaced with the user name.
Note that the adduser command used in the example below does not
support the used syntax on all systems.
Default: add user to group script =
Example: add user to group script = /usr/sbin/adduser %u %g
admin users (S)
This is a list of users who will be granted administrative privi-
leges on the share. This means that they will do all file operations
as the super-user (root).
You should use this option very carefully, as any user in this list
will be able to do anything they like on the share, irrespective of
file permissions.
This parameter will not work with the security = share in Samba 3.0.
This is by design.
Default: admin users =
Example: admin users = jason
afs share (S)
This parameter controls whether special AFS features are enabled for
this share. If enabled, it assumes that the directory exported via
the path parameter is a local AFS import. The special AFS features
include the attempt to hand-craft an AFS token if you enabled
--with-fake-kaserver in configure.
Default: afs share = no
afs username map (G)
If you are using the fake kaserver AFS feature, you might want to
hand-craft the usernames you are creating tokens for. For example
this is necessary if you have users from several domain in your AFS
Protection Database. One possible scheme to code users as
DOMAIN+User as it is done by winbind with the + as a separator.
The mapped user name must contain the cell name to log into, so
without setting this parameter there will be no token.
Default: afs username map =
Example: afs username map = %u@afs.samba.org
aio read size (S)
If Samba has been built with asynchronous I/O support and this inte-
ger parameter is set to non-zero value, Samba will read from file
asynchronously when size of request is bigger than this value. Note
that it happens only for non-chained and non-chaining reads and when
not using write cache.
Current implementation of asynchronous I/O in Samba 3.0 does support
only up to 10 outstanding asynchronous requests, read and write com-
bined.
write cache size
aio write size
Default: aio read size = 0
Example: aio read size = 16384 # Use asynchronous I/O for reads big-
ger than 16KB request size
aio write size (S)
If Samba has been built with asynchronous I/O support and this inte-
ger parameter is set to non-zero value, Samba will write to file
asynchronously when size of request is bigger than this value. Note
that it happens only for non-chained and non-chaining reads and when
not using write cache.
Current implementation of asynchronous I/O in Samba 3.0 does support
only up to 10 outstanding asynchronous requests, read and write com-
bined.
write cache size
aio read size
Default: aio write size = 0
Example: aio write size = 16384 # Use asynchronous I/O for writes
bigger than 16KB request size
algorithmic rid base (G)
This determines how Samba will use its algorithmic mapping from
uids/gid to the RIDs needed to construct NT Security Identifiers.
Setting this option to a larger value could be useful to sites tran-
sitioning from WinNT and Win2k, as existing user and group rids
would otherwise clash with sytem users etc.
All UIDs and GIDs must be able to be resolved into SIDs for the cor-
rect operation of ACLs on the server. As such the algorithmic map-
ping can't be 'turned off', but pushing it 'out of the way' should
resolve the issues. Users and groups can then be assigned 'low' RIDs
in arbitary-rid supporting backends.
Default: algorithmic rid base = 1000
Example: algorithmic rid base = 100000
allocation roundup size (S)
This parameter allows an administrator to tune the allocation size
reported to Windows clients. The default size of 1Mb generally
results in improved Windows client performance. However, rounding
the allocation size may cause difficulties for some applications,
e.g. MS Visual Studio. If the MS Visual Studio compiler starts to
crash with an internal error, set this parameter to zero for this
share.
The integer parameter specifies the roundup size in bytes.
Default: allocation roundup size = 1048576
Example: allocation roundup size = 0 # (to disable roundups)
allow trusted domains (G)
This option only takes effect when the security option is set to
server, domain or ads. If it is set to no, then attempts to connect
to a resource from a domain or workgroup other than the one which
smbd is running in will fail, even if that domain is trusted by the
remote server doing the authentication.
This is useful if you only want your Samba server to serve resources
to users in the domain it is a member of. As an example, suppose
that there are two domains DOMA and DOMB. DOMB is trusted by DOMA,
which contains the Samba server. Under normal circumstances, a user
with an account in DOMB can then access the resources of a UNIX
account with the same account name on the Samba server even if they
do not have an account in DOMA. This can make implementing a secu-
rity boundary difficult.
Default: allow trusted domains = yes
announce as (G)
This specifies what type of server nmbd(8) will announce itself as,
to a network neighborhood browse list. By default this is set to
Windows NT. The valid options are : "NT Server" (which can also be
written as "NT"), "NT Workstation", "Win95" or "WfW" meaning Windows
NT Server, Windows NT Workstation, Windows 95 and Windows for Work-
groups respectively. Do not change this parameter unless you have a
specific need to stop Samba appearing as an NT server as this may
prevent Samba servers from participating as browser servers cor-
rectly.
Default: announce as = NT Server
Example: announce as = Win95
announce version (G)
This specifies the major and minor version numbers that nmbd will
use when announcing itself as a server. The default is 4.9. Do not
change this parameter unless you have a specific need to set a Samba
server to be a downlevel server.
Default: announce version = 4.9
Example: announce version = 2.0
auth methods (G)
This option allows the administrator to chose what authentication
methods smbd will use when authenticating a user. This option
defaults to sensible values based on security. This should be con-
sidered a developer option and used only in rare circumstances. In
the majority (if not all) of production servers, the default setting
should be adequate.
Each entry in the list attempts to authenticate the user in turn,
until the user authenticates. In practice only one method will ever
actually be able to complete the authentication.
Possible options include guest (anonymous access), sam (lookups in
local list of accounts based on netbios name or domain name), win-
bind (relay authentication requests for remote users through win-
bindd), ntdomain (pre-winbindd method of authentication for remote
domain users; deprecated in favour of winbind method), trustdomain
(authenticate trusted users by contacting the remote DC directly
from smbd; deprecated in favour of winbind method).
Default: auth methods =
Example: auth methods = guest sam winbind
available (S)
This parameter lets you "turn off" a service. If available = no,
then ALL attempts to connect to the service will fail. Such failures
are logged.
Default: available = yes
bind interfaces only (G)
This global parameter allows the Samba admin to limit what inter-
faces on a machine will serve SMB requests. It affects file service
smbd(8) and name service nmbd(8) in a slightly different ways.
For name service it causes nmbd to bind to ports 137 and 138 on the
interfaces listed in the interfaces parameter. nmbd also binds to
the "all addresses" interface (0.0.0.0) on ports 137 and 138 for the
purposes of reading broadcast messages. If this option is not set
then nmbd will service name requests on all of these sockets. If
bind interfaces only is set then nmbd will check the source address
of any packets coming in on the broadcast sockets and discard any
that don't match the broadcast addresses of the interfaces in the
interfaces parameter list. As unicast packets are received on the
other sockets it allows nmbd to refuse to serve names to machines
that send packets that arrive through any interfaces not listed in
the interfaces list. IP Source address spoofing does defeat this
simple check, however, so it must not be used seriously as a secu-
rity feature for nmbd.
For file service it causes smbd(8) to bind only to the interface
list given in the interfaces parameter. This restricts the networks
that smbd will serve to packets coming in those interfaces. Note
that you should not use this parameter for machines that are serving
PPP or other intermittent or non-broadcast network interfaces as it
will not cope with non-permanent interfaces.
If bind interfaces only is set then unless the network address
127.0.0.1 is added to the interfaces parameter list smbpasswd(8) and
swat(8) may not work as expected due to the reasons covered below.
To change a users SMB password, the smbpasswd by default connects to
the localhost - 127.0.0.1 address as an SMB client to issue the
password change request. If bind interfaces only is set then unless
the network address 127.0.0.1 is added to the interfaces parameter
list then smbpasswd will fail to connect in it's default mode. smb-
passwd can be forced to use the primary IP interface of the local
host by using its smbpasswd(8) -r remote machine parameter, with
remote machine set to the IP name of the primary interface of the
local host.
The swat status page tries to connect with smbd and nmbd at the
address 127.0.0.1 to determine if they are running. Not adding
127.0.0.1 will cause smbd and nmbd to always show "not running" even
if they really are. This can prevent swat from starting/stop-
ping/restarting smbd and nmbd.
Default: bind interfaces only = no
blocking locks (S)
This parameter controls the behavior of smbd(8) when given a request
by a client to obtain a byte range lock on a region of an open file,
and the request has a time limit associated with it.
If this parameter is set and the lock range requested cannot be
immediately satisfied, samba will internally queue the lock request,
and periodically attempt to obtain the lock until the timeout period
expires.
If this parameter is set to no, then samba will behave as previous
versions of Samba would and will fail the lock request immediately
if the lock range cannot be obtained.
Default: blocking locks = yes
block size (S)
This parameter controls the behavior of smbd(8) when reporting disk
free sizes. By default, this reports a disk block size of 1024
bytes.
Changing this parameter may have some effect on the efficiency of
client writes, this is not yet confirmed. This parameter was added
to allow advanced administrators to change it (usually to a higher
value) and test the effect it has on client write performance with-
out re-compiling the code. As this is an experimental option it may
be removed in a future release.
Changing this option does not change the disk free reporting size,
just the block size unit reported to the client.
Default: block size = 1024
Example: block size = 4096
browsable
This parameter is a synonym for browseable.
browseable (S)
This controls whether this share is seen in the list of available
shares in a net view and in the browse list.
Default: browseable = yes
browse list (G)
This controls whether smbd(8) will serve a browse list to a client
doing a NetServerEnum call. Normally set to yes. You should never
need to change this.
Default: browse list = yes
casesignames
This parameter is a synonym for case sensitive.
case sensitive (S)
See the discussion in the section name mangling.
Default: case sensitive = no
change notify (S)
This parameter specifies whether Samba should reply to a client's
file change notify requests.
You should never need to change this parameter
Default: change notify = no
change share command (G)
Samba 2.2.0 introduced the ability to dynamically add and delete
shares via the Windows NT 4.0 Server Manager. The change share com-
mand is used to define an external program or script which will mod-
ify an existing service definition in smb.conf. In order to success-
fully execute the change share command, smbd requires that the
administrator be connected using a root account (i.e. uid == 0).
When executed, smbd will automatically invoke the change share com-
mand with five parameters.
o configFile - the location of the global smb.conf file.
o shareName - the name of the new share.
o pathName - path to an **existing** directory on disk.
o comment - comment string to associate with the new share.
o max connections Number of maximum simultaneous connections to
this share.
This parameter is only used modify existing file shares defini-
tions. To modify printer shares, use the "Printers..." folder as
seen when browsing the Samba host.
Default: change share command =
Example: change share command = /usr/local/bin/addshare
check password script (G)
The name of a program that can be used to check password complexity.
The password is sent to the program's standrad input.
The program must return 0 on good password any other value other-
wise. In case the password is considered weak (the program do not
return 0) the user will be notified and the password change will
fail.
Note: In the example directory there is a sample program called
crackcheck that uses cracklib to checkpassword quality
Default: check password script = Disabled
Example: check password script = check password script =
/usr/local/sbin/crackcheck
client lanman auth (G)
This parameter determines whether or not smbclient(8) and other
samba client tools will attempt to authenticate itself to servers
using the weaker LANMAN password hash. If disabled, only server
which support NT password hashes (e.g. Windows NT/2000, Samba,
etc... but not Windows 95/98) will be able to be connected from the
Samba client.
The LANMAN encrypted response is easily broken, due to it's case-
insensitive nature, and the choice of algorithm. Clients without
Windows 95/98 servers are advised to disable this option.
Disabling this option will also disable the client plaintext auth
option
Likewise, if the client ntlmv2 auth parameter is enabled, then only
NTLMv2 logins will be attempted.
Default: client lanman auth = yes
client ntlmv2 auth (G)
This parameter determines whether or not smbclient(8) will attempt
to authenticate itself to servers using the NTLMv2 encrypted pass-
word response.
If enabled, only an NTLMv2 and LMv2 response (both much more secure
than earlier versions) will be sent. Many servers (including NT4 <
SP4, Win9x and Samba 2.2) are not compatible with NTLMv2.
Similarly, if enabled, NTLMv1, client lanman auth and client plain-
text auth authentication will be disabled. This also disables share-
level authentication.
If disabled, an NTLM response (and possibly a LANMAN response) will
be sent by the client, depending on the value of client lanman auth.
Note that some sites (particularly those following 'best practice'
security polices) only allow NTLMv2 responses, and not the weaker LM
or NTLM.
Default: client ntlmv2 auth = no
client plaintext auth (G)
Specifies whether a client should send a plaintext password if the
server does not support encrypted passwords.
Default: client plaintext auth = yes
client schannel (G)
This controls whether the client offers or even demands the use of
the netlogon schannel. client schannel = no does not offer the
schannel, client schannel = auto offers the schannel but does not
enforce it, and client schannel = yes denies access if the server is
not able to speak netlogon schannel.
Default: client schannel = auto
Example: client schannel = yes
client signing (G)
This controls whether the client offers or requires the server it
talks to to use SMB signing. Possible values are auto, mandatory and
disabled.
When set to auto, SMB signing is offered, but not enforced. When set
to mandatory, SMB signing is required and if set to disabled, SMB
signing is not offered either.
Default: client signing = auto
client use spnego (G)
This variable controls whether Samba clients will try to use Simple
and Protected NEGOciation (as specified by rfc2478) with supporting
servers (including WindowsXP, Windows2000 and Samba 3.0) to agree
upon an authentication mechanism. This enables Kerberos authentica-
tion in particular.
Default: client use spnego = yes
comment (S)
This is a text field that is seen next to a share when a client does
a queries the server, either via the network neighborhood or via net
view to list what shares are available.
If you want to set the string that is displayed next to the machine
name then see the server string parameter.
Default: comment = # No comment
Example: comment = Fred's Files
config file (G)
This allows you to override the config file to use, instead of the
default (usually smb.conf). There is a chicken and egg problem here
as this option is set in the config file!
For this reason, if the name of the config file has changed when the
parameters are loaded then it will reload them from the new config
file.
This option takes the usual substitutions, which can be very useful.
If the config file doesn't exist then it won't be loaded (allowing
you to special case the config files of just a few clients).
No default
Example: config file = /usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf.%m
copy (S)
This parameter allows you to "clone" service entries. The specified
service is simply duplicated under the current service's name. Any
parameters specified in the current section will override those in
the section being copied.
This feature lets you set up a 'template' service and create similar
services easily. Note that the service being copied must occur ear-
lier in the configuration file than the service doing the copying.
Default: copy =
Example: copy = otherservice
create mode
This parameter is a synonym for create mask.
create mask (S)
When a file is created, the necessary permissions are calculated
according to the mapping from DOS modes to UNIX permissions, and the
resulting UNIX mode is then bit-wise 'AND'ed with this parameter.
This parameter may be thought of as a bit-wise MASK for the UNIX
modes of a file. Any bit not set here will be removed from the modes
set on a file when it is created.
The default value of this parameter removes the group and other
write and execute bits from the UNIX modes.
Following this Samba will bit-wise 'OR' the UNIX mode created from
this parameter with the value of the force create mode parameter
which is set to 000 by default.
This parameter does not affect directory masks. See the parameter
directory mask for details.
Note that this parameter does not apply to permissions set by Win-
dows NT/2000 ACL editors. If the administrator wishes to enforce a
mask on access control lists also, they need to set the security
mask.
Default: create mask = 0744
Example: create mask = 0775
csc policy (S)
This stands for client-side caching policy, and specifies how
clients capable of offline caching will cache the files in the
share. The valid values are: manual, documents, programs, disable.
These values correspond to those used on Windows servers.
For example, shares containing roaming profiles can have offline
caching disabled using csc policy = disable.
Default: csc policy = manual
Example: csc policy = programs
cups options (S)
This parameter is only applicable if printing is set to cups. Its
value is a free form string of options passed directly to the cups
library.
You can pass any generic print option known to CUPS (as listed in
the CUPS "Software Users' Manual"). You can also pass any printer
specific option (as listed in "lpoptions -d printername -l") valid
for the target queue.
You should set this parameter to raw if your CUPS server error_log
file contains messages such as "Unsupported format 'applica-
tion/octet-stream'" when printing from a Windows client through
Samba. It is no longer necessary to enable system wide raw printing
in /etc/cups/mime.{convs,types}.
Default: cups options = ""
Example: cups options = "raw,media=a4,job-sheets=secret,secret"
cups server (G)
This parameter is only applicable if printing is set to cups.
If set, this option overrides the ServerName option in the CUPS
client.conf. This is necessary if you have virtual samba servers
that connect to different CUPS daemons.
Optionally, a port can be specified by separating the server name
and port number with a colon. If no port was specified, the default
port for IPP (631) will be used.
Default: cups server = ""
Example: cups server = mycupsserver
Example: cups server = mycupsserver:1631
deadtime (G)
The value of the parameter (a decimal integer) represents the number
of minutes of inactivity before a connection is considered dead, and
it is disconnected. The deadtime only takes effect if the number of
open files is zero.
This is useful to stop a server's resources being exhausted by a
large number of inactive connections.
Most clients have an auto-reconnect feature when a connection is
broken so in most cases this parameter should be transparent to
users.
Using this parameter with a timeout of a few minutes is recommended
for most systems.
A deadtime of zero indicates that no auto-disconnection should be
performed.
Default: deadtime = 0
Example: deadtime = 15
debug hires timestamp (G)
Sometimes the timestamps in the log messages are needed with a reso-
lution of higher that seconds, this boolean parameter adds microsec-
ond resolution to the timestamp message header when turned on.
Note that the parameter debug timestamp must be on for this to have
an effect.
Default: debug hires timestamp = no
debug pid (G)
When using only one log file for more then one forked
smbd(8)-process there may be hard to follow which process outputs
which message. This boolean parameter is adds the process-id to the
timestamp message headers in the logfile when turned on.
Note that the parameter debug timestamp must be on for this to have
an effect.
Default: debug pid = no
debug prefix timestamp (G)
With this option enabled, the timestamp message header is prefixed
to the debug message without the filename and function information
that is included with the debug timestamp parameter. This gives
timestamps to the messages without adding an additional line.
Note that this parameter overrides the debug timestamp parameter.
Default: debug prefix timestamp = no
timestamp logs
This parameter is a synonym for debug timestamp.
debug timestamp (G)
Samba debug log messages are timestamped by default. If you are run-
ning at a high debug level these timestamps can be distracting. This
boolean parameter allows timestamping to be turned off.
Default: debug timestamp = yes
debug uid (G)
Samba is sometimes run as root and sometime run as the connected
user, this boolean parameter inserts the current euid, egid, uid and
gid to the timestamp message headers in the log file if turned on.
Note that the parameter debug timestamp must be on for this to have
an effect.
Default: debug uid = no
default case (S)
See the section on name mangling. Also note the short preserve case
parameter.
Default: default case = lower
default devmode (S)
This parameter is only applicable to printable services. When smbd
is serving Printer Drivers to Windows NT/2k/XP clients, each printer
on the Samba server has a Device Mode which defines things such as
paper size and orientation and duplex settings. The device mode can
only correctly be generated by the printer driver itself (which can
only be executed on a Win32 platform). Because smbd is unable to
execute the driver code to generate the device mode, the default
behavior is to set this field to NULL.
Most problems with serving printer drivers to Windows NT/2k/XP
clients can be traced to a problem with the generated device mode.
Certain drivers will do things such as crashing the client's
Explorer.exe with a NULL devmode. However, other printer drivers can
cause the client's spooler service (spoolsv.exe) to die if the dev-
mode was not created by the driver itself (i.e. smbd generates a
default devmode).
This parameter should be used with care and tested with the printer
driver in question. It is better to leave the device mode to NULL
and let the Windows client set the correct values. Because drivers
do not do this all the time, setting default devmode = yes will
instruct smbd to generate a default one.
For more information on Windows NT/2k printing and Device Modes, see
the MSDN documentation.
Default: default devmode = yes
default
This parameter is a synonym for default service.
default service (G)
This parameter specifies the name of a service which will be con-
nected to if the service actually requested cannot be found. Note
that the square brackets are NOT given in the parameter value (see
example below).
There is no default value for this parameter. If this parameter is
not given, attempting to connect to a nonexistent service results in
an error.
Typically the default service would be a guest ok, read-only ser-
vice.
Also note that the apparent service name will be changed to equal
that of the requested service, this is very useful as it allows you
to use macros like %S to make a wildcard service.
Note also that any "_" characters in the name of the service used in
the default service will get mapped to a "/". This allows for inter-
esting things.
Default: default service =
Example: default service = pub
defer sharing violations (G)
Windows allows specifying how a file will be shared with other pro-
cesses when it is opened. Sharing violations occur when a file is
opened by a different process using options that violate the share
settings specified by other processes. This parameter causes smbd to
act as a Windows server does, and defer returning a "sharing viola-
tion" error message for up to one second, allowing the client to
close the file causing the violation in the meantime.
UNIX by default does not have this behaviour.
There should be no reason to turn off this parameter, as it is
designed to enable Samba to more correctly emulate Windows.
Default: defer sharing violations = True
delete group script (G)
This is the full pathname to a script that will be run AS ROOT
smbd(8) when a group is requested to be deleted. It will expand any
%g to the group name passed. This script is only useful for instal-
lations using the Windows NT domain administration tools.
Default: delete group script =
deleteprinter command (G)
With the introduction of MS-RPC based printer support for Windows
NT/2000 clients in Samba 2.2, it is now possible to delete printer
at run time by issuing the DeletePrinter() RPC call.
For a Samba host this means that the printer must be physically
deleted from underlying printing system. The deleteprinter command
defines a script to be run which will perform the necessary opera-
tions for removing the printer from the print system and from
smb.conf.
The deleteprinter command is automatically called with only one
parameter: printer name.
Once the deleteprinter command has been executed, smbd will reparse
the
smb.conf to associated printer no longer exists. If the sharename
is still valid, then smbd will return an ACCESS_DENIED error to the
client.
Default: deleteprinter command =
Example: deleteprinter command = /usr/bin/removeprinter
delete readonly (S)
This parameter allows readonly files to be deleted. This is not nor-
mal DOS semantics, but is allowed by UNIX.
This option may be useful for running applications such as rcs,
where UNIX file ownership prevents changing file permissions, and
DOS semantics prevent deletion of a read only file.
Default: delete readonly = no
delete share command (G)
Samba 2.2.0 introduced the ability to dynamically add and delete
shares via the Windows NT 4.0 Server Manager. The delete share com-
mand is used to define an external program or script which will
remove an existing service definition from smb.conf. In order to
successfully execute the delete share command, smbd requires that
the administrator be connected using a root account (i.e. uid == 0).
When executed, smbd will automatically invoke the delete share com-
mand with two parameters.
o configFile - the location of the global smb.conf file.
o shareName - the name of the existing service.
This parameter is only used to remove file shares. To delete
printer shares, see the deleteprinter command.
Default: delete share command =
Example: delete share command = /usr/local/bin/delshare
delete user from group script (G)
Full path to the script that will be called when a user is removed
from a group using the Windows NT domain administration tools. It
will be run by smbd(8) AS ROOT. Any %g will be replaced with the
group name and any %u will be replaced with the user name.
Default: delete user from group script =
Example: delete user from group script = /usr/sbin/deluser %u %g
delete user script (G)
This is the full pathname to a script that will be run by smbd(8)
when managing users with remote RPC (NT) tools.
This script is called when a remote client removes a user from the
server, normally using 'User Manager for Domains' or rpcclient.
This script should delete the given UNIX username.
Default: delete user script =
Example: delete user script = /usr/local/samba/bin/del_user %u
delete veto files (S)
This option is used when Samba is attempting to delete a directory
that contains one or more vetoed directories (see the veto files
option). If this option is set to no (the default) then if a vetoed
directory contains any non-vetoed files or directories then the
directory delete will fail. This is usually what you want.
If this option is set to yes, then Samba will attempt to recursively
delete any files and directories within the vetoed directory. This
can be useful for integration with file serving systems such as
NetAtalk which create meta-files within directories you might nor-
mally veto DOS/Windows users from seeing (e.g. .AppleDouble)
Setting delete veto files = yes allows these directories to be
transparently deleted when the parent directory is deleted (so long
as the user has permissions to do so).
Default: delete veto files = no
dfree cache time (S)
The dfree cache time should only be used on systems where a problem
occurs with the internal disk space calculations. This has been
known to happen with Ultrix, but may occur with other operating sys-
tems. The symptom that was seen was an error of "Abort Retry Ignore"
at the end of each directory listing.
This is a new parameter introduced in Samba version 3.0.21. It spec-
ifies in seconds the time that smbd will cache the output of a disk
free query. If set to zero (the default) no caching is done. This
allows a heavily loaded server to prevent rapid spawning of dfree
command scripts increasing the load.
By default this parameter is zero, meaning no caching will be done.
No default
Example: dfree cache time = dfree cache time = 60
dfree command (S)
The dfree command setting should only be used on systems where a
problem occurs with the internal disk space calculations. This has
been known to happen with Ultrix, but may occur with other operating
systems. The symptom that was seen was an error of "Abort Retry
Ignore" at the end of each directory listing.
This setting allows the replacement of the internal routines to cal-
culate the total disk space and amount available with an external
routine. The example below gives a possible script that might ful-
fill this function.
In Samba version 3.0.21 this parameter has been changed to be a per-
share parameter, and in addition the parameter dfree cache time was
added to allow the output of this script to be cached for systems
under heavy load.
The external program will be passed a single parameter indicating a
directory in the filesystem being queried. This will typically con-
sist of the string ./. The script should return two integers in
ASCII. The first should be the total disk space in blocks, and the
second should be the number of available blocks. An optional third
return value can give the block size in bytes. The default blocksize
is 1024 bytes.
Note: Your script should NOT be setuid or setgid and should be owned
by (and writeable only by) root!
Where the script dfree (which must be made executable) could be:
#!/bin/sh
df $1 | tail -1 | awk '{print $2" "$4}'
or perhaps (on Sys V based systems):
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/df -k $1 | tail -1 | awk '{print $3" "$5}'
Note that you may have to replace the command names with full path
names on some systems.
By default internal routines for determining the disk capacity and
remaining space will be used.
No default
Example: dfree command = /usr/local/samba/bin/dfree
directory mode
This parameter is a synonym for directory mask.
directory mask (S)
This parameter is the octal modes which are used when converting DOS
modes to UNIX modes when creating UNIX directories.
When a directory is created, the necessary permissions are calcu-
lated according to the mapping from DOS modes to UNIX permissions,
and the resulting UNIX mode is then bit-wise 'AND'ed with this
parameter. This parameter may be thought of as a bit-wise MASK for
the UNIX modes of a directory. Any bit not set here will be removed
from the modes set on a directory when it is created.
The default value of this parameter removes the 'group' and 'other'
write bits from the UNIX mode, allowing only the user who owns the
directory to modify it.
Following this Samba will bit-wise 'OR' the UNIX mode created from
this parameter with the value of the force directory mode parameter.
This parameter is set to 000 by default (i.e. no extra mode bits are
added).
Note that this parameter does not apply to permissions set by Win-
dows NT/2000 ACL editors. If the administrator wishes to enforce a
mask on access control lists also, they need to set the directory
security mask.
Default: directory mask = 0755
Example: directory mask = 0775
directory security mask (S)
This parameter controls what UNIX permission bits can be modified
when a Windows NT client is manipulating the UNIX permission on a
directory using the native NT security dialog box.
This parameter is applied as a mask (AND'ed with) to the changed
permission bits, thus preventing any bits not in this mask from
being modified. Make sure not to mix up this parameter with force
directory security mode, which works similar like this one but uses
logical OR instead of AND. Essentially, zero bits in this mask may
be treated as a set of bits the user is not allowed to change.
If not set explicitly this parameter is set to 0777 meaning a user
is allowed to modify all the user/group/world permissions on a
directory.
Note that users who can access the Samba server through other means
can easily bypass this restriction, so it is primarily useful for
standalone "appliance" systems. Administrators of most normal sys-
tems will probably want to leave it as the default of 0777.
Default: directory security mask = 0777
Example: directory security mask = 0700
disable netbios (G)
Enabling this parameter will disable netbios support in Samba. Net-
bios is the only available form of browsing in all windows versions
except for 2000 and XP.
Note
Clients that only support netbios won't be able to see your samba
server when netbios support is disabled. Default: disable netbios =
no
disable spoolss (G)
Enabling this parameter will disable Samba's support for the SPOOLSS
set of MS-RPC's and will yield identical behavior as Samba 2.0.x.
Windows NT/2000 clients will downgrade to using Lanman style print-
ing commands. Windows 9x/ME will be unaffected by the parameter.
However, this will also disable the ability to upload printer driv-
ers to a Samba server via the Windows NT Add Printer Wizard or by
using the NT printer properties dialog window. It will also disable
the capability of Windows NT/2000 clients to download print drivers
from the Samba host upon demand. Be very careful about enabling
this parameter.
Default: disable spoolss = no
display charset (G)
Specifies the charset that samba will use to print messages to std-
out and stderr. The default value is "LOCALE", which means automati-
cally set, depending on the current locale. The value should gener-
ally be the same as the value of the parameter unix charset.
Default: display charset = "LOCALE" or "ASCII" (depending on the
system)
Example: display charset = UTF8
dmapi support (S)
This parameter specifies whether Samba should use DMAPI to determine
whether a file is offline or not. This would typically be used in
conjunction with a hierarchical storage system that automatically
migrates files to tape.
Note that Samba infers the status of a file by examining the events
that a DMAPI application has registered interest in. This heuristic
is satisfactory for a number of hierarchical storage systems, but
there may be system for which it will fail. In this case, Samba may
erroneously report files to be offline.
This parameter is only available if a supported DMAPI implementation
was found at compilation time. It will only be used if DMAPI is
found to enabled on the system at run time.
Default: dmapi support = no
dns proxy (G)
Specifies that nmbd(8) when acting as a WINS server and finding that
a NetBIOS name has not been registered, should treat the NetBIOS
name word-for-word as a DNS name and do a lookup with the DNS server
for that name on behalf of the name-querying client.
Note that the maximum length for a NetBIOS name is 15 characters, so
the DNS name (or DNS alias) can likewise only be 15 characters, max-
imum.
nmbd spawns a second copy of itself to do the DNS name lookup
requests, as doing a name lookup is a blocking action.
Default: dns proxy = yes
domain logons (G)
If set to yes, the Samba server will provide the netlogon service
for Windows 9X network logons for the workgroup it is in. This will
also cause the Samba server to act as a domain controller for NT4
style domain services. For more details on setting up this feature
see the Domain Control chapter of the Samba HOWTO Collection.
Default: domain logons = no
domain master (G)
Tell smbd(8) to enable WAN-wide browse list collation. Setting this
option causes nmbd to claim a special domain specific NetBIOS name
that identifies it as a domain master browser for its given work-
group. Local master browsers in the same workgroup on broadcast-iso-
lated subnets will give this nmbd their local browse lists, and then
ask smbd(8) for a complete copy of the browse list for the whole
wide area network. Browser clients will then contact their local
master browser, and will receive the domain-wide browse list,
instead of just the list for their broadcast-isolated subnet.
Note that Windows NT Primary Domain Controllers expect to be able to
claim this workgroup specific special NetBIOS name that identifies
them as domain master browsers for that workgroup by default (i.e.
there is no way to prevent a Windows NT PDC from attempting to do
this). This means that if this parameter is set and nmbd claims the
special name for a workgroup before a Windows NT PDC is able to do
so then cross subnet browsing will behave strangely and may fail.
If domain logons = yes, then the default behavior is to enable the
domain master parameter. If domain logons is not enabled (the
default setting), then neither will domain master be enabled by
default.
When domain logons = Yes the default setting for this parameter is
Yes, with the result that Samba will be a PDC. If domain master =
No, Samba will function as a BDC. In general, this parameter should
be set to 'No' only on a BDC.
Default: domain master = auto
dont descend (S)
There are certain directories on some systems (e.g., the /proc tree
under Linux) that are either not of interest to clients or are in-
finitely deep (recursive). This parameter allows you to specify a
comma-delimited list of directories that the server should always
show as empty.
Note that Samba can be very fussy about the exact format of the
"dont descend" entries. For example you may need
./proc instead of just /proc. Experimentation is the best policy
:-)
Default: dont descend =
Example: dont descend = /proc,/dev
dos charset (G)
DOS SMB clients assume the server has the same charset as they do.
This option specifies which charset Samba should talk to DOS
clients.
The default depends on which charsets you have installed. Samba
tries to use charset 850 but falls back to ASCII in case it is not
available. Run testparm(1) to check the default on your system.
No default
dos filemode (S)
The default behavior in Samba is to provide UNIX-like behavior where
only the owner of a file/directory is able to change the permissions
on it. However, this behavior is often confusing to DOS/Windows
users. Enabling this parameter allows a user who has write access to
the file (by whatever means) to modify the permissions (including
ACL) on it. Note that a user belonging to the group owning the file
will not be allowed to change permissions if the group is only
granted read access. Ownership of the file/directory may also be
changed.
Default: dos filemode = no
dos filetime resolution (S)
Under the DOS and Windows FAT filesystem, the finest granularity on
time resolution is two seconds. Setting this parameter for a share
causes Samba to round the reported time down to the nearest two sec-
ond boundary when a query call that requires one second resolution
is made to smbd(8).
This option is mainly used as a compatibility option for Visual C++
when used against Samba shares. If oplocks are enabled on a share,
Visual C++ uses two different time reading calls to check if a file
has changed since it was last read. One of these calls uses a one-
second granularity, the other uses a two second granularity. As the
two second call rounds any odd second down, then if the file has a
timestamp of an odd number of seconds then the two timestamps will
not match and Visual C++ will keep reporting the file has changed.
Setting this option causes the two timestamps to match, and Visual
C++ is happy.
Default: dos filetime resolution = no
dos filetimes (S)
Under DOS and Windows, if a user can write to a file they can change
the timestamp on it. Under POSIX semantics, only the owner of the
file or root may change the timestamp. By default, Samba runs with
POSIX semantics and refuses to change the timestamp on a file if the
user smbd is acting on behalf of is not the file owner. Setting this
option to
yes allows DOS semantics and smbd(8) will change the file timestamp
as DOS requires. Due to changes in Microsoft Office 2000 and beyond,
the default for this parameter has been changed from "no" to "yes"
in Samba 3.0.14 and above. Microsoft Excel will display dialog box
warnings about the file being changed by another user if this param-
eter is not set to "yes" and files are being shared between users.
Default: dos filetimes = yes
ea support (S)
This boolean parameter controls whether smbd(8) will allow clients
to attempt to store OS/2 style Extended attributes on a share. In
order to enable this parameter the underlying filesystem exported by
the share must support extended attributes (such as provided on XFS
and EXT3 on Linux, with the correct kernel patches). On Linux the
filesystem must have been mounted with the mount option user_xattr
in order for extended attributes to work, also extended attributes
must be compiled into the Linux kernel.
Default: ea support = no
enable asu support (G)
Hosts running the "Advanced Server for Unix (ASU)" product require
some special accomodations such as creating a builting [ADMIN$]
share that only supports IPC connections. The has been the default
behavior in smbd for many years. However, certain Microsoft applica-
tions such as the Print Migrator tool require that the remote server
support an [ADMIN$} file share. Disabling this parameter allows for
creating an [ADMIN$] file share in smb.conf.
Default: enable asu support = no
enable privileges (G)
This parameter controls whether or not smbd will honor privileges
assigned to specific SIDs via either net rpc rights or one of the
Windows user and group manager tools. This parameter is enabled by
default. It can be disabled to prevent members of the Domain Admins
group from being able to assign privileges to users or groups which
can then result in certain smbd operations running as root that
would normally run under the context of the connected user.
An example of how privileges can be used is to assign the right to
join clients to a Samba controlled domain without providing root
access to the server via smbd.
Please read the extended description provided in the Samba HOWTO
documentation.
Default: enable privileges = yes
encrypt passwords (G)
This boolean controls whether encrypted passwords will be negotiated
with the client. Note that Windows NT 4.0 SP3 and above and also
Windows 98 will by default expect encrypted passwords unless a reg-
istry entry is changed. To use encrypted passwords in Samba see the
chapter "User Database" in the Samba HOWTO Collection.
MS Windows clients that expect Microsoft encrypted passwords and
that do not have plain text password support enabled will be able to
connect only to a Samba server that has encrypted password support
enabled and for which the user accounts have a valid encrypted pass-
word. Refer to the smbpasswd command man page for information
regarding the creation of encrypted passwords for user accounts.
The use of plain text passwords is NOT advised as support for this
feature is no longer maintained in Microsoft Windows products. If
you want to use plain text passwords you must set this parameter to
no.
In order for encrypted passwords to work correctly smbd(8) must
either have access to a local smbpasswd(5) file (see the smb-
passwd(8) program for information on how to set up and maintain this
file), or set the security = [server|domain|ads] parameter which
causes smbd to authenticate against another server.
Default: encrypt passwords = yes
enhanced browsing (G)
This option enables a couple of enhancements to cross-subnet browse
propagation that have been added in Samba but which are not standard
in Microsoft implementations.
The first enhancement to browse propagation consists of a regular
wildcard query to a Samba WINS server for all Domain Master
Browsers, followed by a browse synchronization with each of the
returned DMBs. The second enhancement consists of a regular ran-
domised browse synchronization with all currently known DMBs.
You may wish to disable this option if you have a problem with empty
workgroups not disappearing from browse lists. Due to the restric-
tions of the browse protocols these enhancements can cause a empty
workgroup to stay around forever which can be annoying.
In general you should leave this option enabled as it makes cross-
subnet browse propagation much more reliable.
Default: enhanced browsing = yes
enumports command (G)
The concept of a "port" is fairly foreign to UNIX hosts. Under Win-
dows NT/2000 print servers, a port is associated with a port monitor
and generally takes the form of a local port (i.e. LPT1:, COM1:,
FILE:) or a remote port (i.e. LPD Port Monitor, etc...). By default,
Samba has only one port defined--"Samba Printer Port". Under Windows
NT/2000, all printers must have a valid port name. If you wish to
have a list of ports displayed (smbd does not use a port name for
anything) other than the default "Samba Printer Port", you can
define enumports command to point to a program which should generate
a list of ports, one per line, to standard output. This listing will
then be used in response to the level 1 and 2 EnumPorts() RPC.
Default: enumports command =
Example: enumports command = /usr/bin/listports
eventlog list (G)
This option defines a list of log names that Samba will report to
the Microsoft EventViewer utility. The listed eventlogs will be
associated with tdb file on disk in the $(lockdir)/eventlog.
The administrator must use an external process to parse the normal
Unix logs such as /var/log/messages and write then entries to the
eventlog tdb files. Refer to the eventlogadm(8) utility for how to
write eventlog entries.
Default: eventlog list =
Example: eventlog list = Security Application Syslog Apache
fake directory create times (S)
NTFS and Windows VFAT file systems keep a create time for all files
and directories. This is not the same as the ctime - status change
time - that Unix keeps, so Samba by default reports the earliest of
the various times Unix does keep. Setting this parameter for a share
causes Samba to always report midnight 1-1-1980 as the create time
for directories.
This option is mainly used as a compatibility option for Visual C++
when used against Samba shares. Visual C++ generated makefiles have
the object directory as a dependency for each object file, and a
make rule to create the directory. Also, when NMAKE compares time-
stamps it uses the creation time when examining a directory. Thus
the object directory will be created if it does not exist, but once
it does exist it will always have an earlier timestamp than the
object files it contains.
However, Unix time semantics mean that the create time reported by
Samba will be updated whenever a file is created or or deleted in
the directory. NMAKE finds all object files in the object directory.
The timestamp of the last one built is then compared to the time-
stamp of the object directory. If the directory's timestamp if
newer, then all object files will be rebuilt. Enabling this option
ensures directories always predate their contents and an NMAKE build
will proceed as expected.
Default: fake directory create times = no
fake oplocks (S)
Oplocks are the way that SMB clients get permission from a server to
locally cache file operations. If a server grants an oplock (oppor-
tunistic lock) then the client is free to assume that it is the only
one accessing the file and it will aggressively cache file data.
With some oplock types the client may even cache file open/close
operations. This can give enormous performance benefits.
When you set fake oplocks = yes, smbd(8) will always grant oplock
requests no matter how many clients are using the file.
It is generally much better to use the real oplocks support rather
than this parameter.
If you enable this option on all read-only shares or shares that you
know will only be accessed from one client at a time such as physi-
cally read-only media like CDROMs, you will see a big performance
improvement on many operations. If you enable this option on shares
where multiple clients may be accessing the files read-write at the
same time you can get data corruption. Use this option carefully!
Default: fake oplocks = no
follow symlinks (S)
This parameter allows the Samba administrator to stop smbd(8) from
following symbolic links in a particular share. Setting this parame-
ter to no prevents any file or directory that is a symbolic link
from being followed (the user will get an error). This option is
very useful to stop users from adding a symbolic link to /etc/passwd
in their home directory for instance. However it will slow filename
lookups down slightly.
This option is enabled (i.e. smbd will follow symbolic links) by
default.
Default: follow symlinks = yes
force create mode (S)
This parameter specifies a set of UNIX mode bit permissions that
will always be set on a file created by Samba. This is done by bit-
wise 'OR'ing these bits onto the mode bits of a file that is being
created or having its permissions changed. The default for this
parameter is (in octal) 000. The modes in this parameter are bitwise
'OR'ed onto the file mode after the mask set in the create mask
parameter is applied.
The example below would force all created files to have read and
execute permissions set for 'group' and 'other' as well as the
read/write/execute bits set for the 'user'.
Default: force create mode = 000
Example: force create mode = 0755
force directory mode (S)
This parameter specifies a set of UNIX mode bit permissions that
will always be set on a directory created by Samba. This is done by
bitwise 'OR'ing these bits onto the mode bits of a directory that is
being created. The default for this parameter is (in octal) 0000
which will not add any extra permission bits to a created directory.
This operation is done after the mode mask in the parameter direc-
tory mask is applied.
The example below would force all created directories to have read
and execute permissions set for 'group' and 'other' as well as the
read/write/execute bits set for the 'user'.
Default: force directory mode = 000
Example: force directory mode = 0755
force directory security mode (S)
This parameter controls what UNIX permission bits can be modified
when a Windows NT client is manipulating the UNIX permission on a
directory using the native NT security dialog box.
This parameter is applied as a mask (OR'ed with) to the changed per-
mission bits, thus forcing any bits in this mask that the user may
have modified to be on. Make sure not to mix up this parameter with
directory security mask, which works in a similar manner to this
one, but uses a logical AND instead of an OR.
Essentially, this mask may be treated as a set of bits that, when
modifying security on a directory, to will enable (1) any flags that
are off (0) but which the mask has set to on (1).
If not set explicitly this parameter is 0000, which allows a user to
modify all the user/group/world permissions on a directory without
restrictions.
Note
Users who can access the Samba server through other means can easily
bypass this restriction, so it is primarily useful for standalone
"appliance" systems. Administrators of most normal systems will
probably want to leave it set as 0000. Default: force directory
security mode = 0
Example: force directory security mode = 700
group
This parameter is a synonym for force group.
force group (S)
This specifies a UNIX group name that will be assigned as the
default primary group for all users connecting to this service. This
is useful for sharing files by ensuring that all access to files on
service will use the named group for their permissions checking.
Thus, by assigning permissions for this group to the files and
directories within this service the Samba administrator can restrict
or allow sharing of these files.
In Samba 2.0.5 and above this parameter has extended functionality
in the following way. If the group name listed here has a '+' char-
acter prepended to it then the current user accessing the share only
has the primary group default assigned to this group if they are
already assigned as a member of that group. This allows an adminis-
trator to decide that only users who are already in a particular
group will create files with group ownership set to that group. This
gives a finer granularity of ownership assignment. For example, the
setting force group = +sys means that only users who are already in
group sys will have their default primary group assigned to sys when
accessing this Samba share. All other users will retain their ordi-
nary primary group.
If the force user parameter is also set the group specified in force
group will override the primary group set in force user.
Default: force group =
Example: force group = agroup
force printername (S)
When printing from Windows NT (or later), each printer in smb.conf
has two associated names which can be used by the client. The first
is the sharename (or shortname) defined in smb.conf. This is the
only printername available for use by Windows 9x clients. The second
name associated with a printer can be seen when browsing to the
"Printers" (or "Printers and Faxes") folder on the Samba server.
This is referred to simply as the printername (not to be confused
with the printer name option).
When assigning a new driver to a printer on a remote Windows compat-
ible print server such as Samba, the Windows client will rename the
printer to match the driver name just uploaded. This can result in
confusion for users when multiple printers are bound to the same
driver. To prevent Samba from allowing the printer's printername to
differ from the sharename defined in smb.conf, set force printername
= yes.
Be aware that enabling this parameter may affect migrating printers
from a Windows server to Samba since Windows has no way to force the
sharename and printername to match.
It is recommended that this parameter's value not be changed once
the printer is in use by clients as this could cause a user not be
able to delete printer connections from their local Printers folder.
Default: force printername = no
force security mode (S)
This parameter controls what UNIX permission bits can be modified
when a Windows NT client is manipulating the UNIX permission on a
file using the native NT security dialog box.
This parameter is applied as a mask (OR'ed with) to the changed per-
mission bits, thus forcing any bits in this mask that the user may
have modified to be on. Make sure not to mix up this parameter with
security mask, which works similar like this one but uses logical
AND instead of OR.
Essentially, one bits in this mask may be treated as a set of bits
that, when modifying security on a file, the user has always set to
be on.
If not set explicitly this parameter is set to 0, and allows a user
to modify all the user/group/world permissions on a file, with no
restrictions.
Note that users who can access the Samba server through other means
can easily bypass this restriction, so it is primarily useful for
standalone "appliance" systems. Administrators of most normal sys-
tems will probably want to leave this set to 0000.
Default: force security mode = 0
Example: force security mode = 700
force unknown acl user (S)
If this parameter is set, a Windows NT ACL that contains an unknown
SID (security descriptor, or representation of a user or group id)
as the owner or group owner of the file will be silently mapped into
the current UNIX uid or gid of the currently connected user.
This is designed to allow Windows NT clients to copy files and fold-
ers containing ACLs that were created locally on the client machine
and contain users local to that machine only (no domain users) to be
copied to a Samba server (usually with XCOPY /O) and have the
unknown userid and groupid of the file owner map to the current con-
nected user. This can only be fixed correctly when winbindd allows
arbitrary mapping from any Windows NT SID to a UNIX uid or gid.
Try using this parameter when XCOPY /O gives an ACCESS_DENIED error.
Default: force unknown acl user = no
force user (S)
This specifies a UNIX user name that will be assigned as the default
user for all users connecting to this service. This is useful for
sharing files. You should also use it carefully as using it incor-
rectly can cause security problems.
This user name only gets used once a connection is established. Thus
clients still need to connect as a valid user and supply a valid
password. Once connected, all file operations will be performed as
the "forced user", no matter what username the client connected as.
This can be very useful.
In Samba 2.0.5 and above this parameter also causes the primary
group of the forced user to be used as the primary group for all
file activity. Prior to 2.0.5 the primary group was left as the pri-
mary group of the connecting user (this was a bug).
Default: force user =
Example: force user = auser
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
get quota command (G)
The get quota command should only be used whenever there is no oper-
ating system API available from the OS that samba can use.
This option is only available with was used and a working quota api
was found in the system.
This parameter should specify the path to a script that queries the
quota information for the specified user/group for the partition
that the specified directory is on.
Such a script should take 3 arguments:
o directory
o type of query
o uid of user or gid of group
The type of query can be one of :
o 1 - user quotas
o 2 - user default quotas (uid = -1)
o 3 - group quotas
o 4 - group default quotas (gid = -1)
This script should print one line as output with spaces between
the arguments. The arguments are:
o Arg 1 - quota flags (0 = no quotas, 1 = quotas enabled, 2 =
quotas enabled and enforced)
o Arg 2 - number of currently used blocks
o Arg 3 - the softlimit number of blocks
o Arg 4 - the hardlimit number of blocks
o Arg 5 - currently used number of inodes
o Arg 6 - the softlimit number of inodes
o Arg 7 - the hardlimit number of inodes
o Arg 8(optional) - the number of bytes in a block(default is
1024)
Default: get quota command =
Example: get quota command = /usr/local/sbin/query_quota
getwd cache (G)
This is a tuning option. When this is enabled a caching algorithm
will be used to reduce the time taken for getwd() calls. This can
have a significant impact on performance, especially when the wide
smbconfoptions parameter is set to no.
Default: getwd cache = yes
guest account (G)
This is a username which will be used for access to services which
are specified as guest ok (see below). Whatever privileges this user
has will be available to any client connecting to the guest service.
This user must exist in the password file, but does not require a
valid login. The user account "ftp" is often a good choice for this
parameter.
On some systems the default guest account "nobody" may not be able
to print. Use another account in this case. You should test this by
trying to log in as your guest user (perhaps by using the su - com-
mand) and trying to print using the system print command such as
lpr(1) or lp(1).
This parameter does not accept % macros, because many parts of the
system require this value to be constant for correct operation.
Default: guest account = nobody # default can be changed at compile-
time
Example: guest account = ftp
public
This parameter is a synonym for guest ok.
guest ok (S)
If this parameter is yes for a service, then no password is required
to connect to the service. Privileges will be those of the guest
account.
This paramater nullifies the benifits of setting restrict anonymous
= 2
See the section below on security for more information about this
option.
Default: guest ok = no
only guest
This parameter is a synonym for guest only.
guest only (S)
If this parameter is yes for a service, then only guest connections
to the service are permitted. This parameter will have no effect if
guest ok is not set for the service.
See the section below on security for more information about this
option.
Default: guest only = no
hide dot files (S)
This is a boolean parameter that controls whether files starting
with a dot appear as hidden files.
Default: hide dot files = yes
hide files (S)
This is a list of files or directories that are not visible but are
accessible. The DOS 'hidden' attribute is applied to any files or
directories that match.
Each entry in the list must be separated by a '/', which allows spa-
ces to be included in the entry. '*' and '?' can be used to specify
multiple files or directories as in DOS wildcards.
Each entry must be a Unix path, not a DOS path and must not include
the Unix directory separator '/'.
Note that the case sensitivity option is applicable in hiding files.
Setting this parameter will affect the performance of Samba, as it
will be forced to check all files and directories for a match as
they are scanned.
The example shown above is based on files that the Macintosh SMB
client (DAVE) available from Thursby creates for internal use, and
also still hides all files beginning with a dot.
An example of us of this parameter is:
hide files = /.*/DesktopFolderDB/TrashFor%m/resource.frk/
Default: hide files = # no file are hidden
hide special files (S)
This parameter prevents clients from seeing special files such as
sockets, devices and fifo's in directory listings.
Default: hide special files = no
hide unreadable (S)
This parameter prevents clients from seeing the existance of files
that cannot be read. Defaults to off.
Default: hide unreadable = no
hide unwriteable files (S)
This parameter prevents clients from seeing the existance of files
that cannot be written to. Defaults to off. Note that unwriteable
directories are shown as usual.
Default: hide unwriteable files = no
homedir map (G)
If nis homedir is yes, and smbd(8) is also acting as a Win95/98
logon server then this parameter specifies the NIS (or YP) map from
which the server for the user's home directory should be extracted.
At present, only the Sun auto.home map format is understood. The
form of the map is:
username server:/some/file/system
and the program will extract the servername from before the first
':'. There should probably be a better parsing system that copes
with different map formats and also Amd (another automounter) maps.
Note
A working NIS client is required on the system for this option to
work. Default: homedir map =
Example: homedir map = amd.homedir
host msdfs (G)
If set to yes, Samba will act as a Dfs server, and allow Dfs-aware
clients to browse Dfs trees hosted on the server.
See also the msdfs root share level parameter. For more information
on setting up a Dfs tree on Samba, refer to the MSFDS chapter in the
book Samba3-HOWTO.
Default: host msdfs = yes
hostname lookups (G)
Specifies whether samba should use (expensive) hostname lookups or
use the ip addresses instead. An example place where hostname
lookups are currently used is when checking the hosts deny and hosts
allow.
Default: hostname lookups = no
Example: hostname lookups = yes
allow hosts
This parameter is a synonym for hosts allow.
hosts allow (S)
A synonym for this parameter is allow hosts.
This parameter is a comma, space, or tab delimited set of hosts
which are permitted to access a service.
If specified in the [global] section then it will apply to all ser-
vices, regardless of whether the individual service has a different
setting.
You can specify the hosts by name or IP number. For example, you
could restrict access to only the hosts on a Class C subnet with
something like allow hosts = 150.203.5.. The full syntax of the list
is described in the man page hosts_access(5). Note that this man
page may not be present on your system, so a brief description will
be given here also.
Note that the localhost address 127.0.0.1 will always be allowed
access unless specifically denied by a hosts deny option.
You can also specify hosts by network/netmask pairs and by netgroup
names if your system supports netgroups. The EXCEPT keyword can also
be used to limit a wildcard list. The following examples may provide
some help:
Example 1: allow all IPs in 150.203.*.*; except one
hosts allow = 150.203. EXCEPT 150.203.6.66
Example 2: allow hosts that match the given network/netmask
hosts allow = 150.203.15.0/255.255.255.0
Example 3: allow a couple of hosts
hosts allow = lapland, arvidsjaur
Example 4: allow only hosts in NIS netgroup "foonet", but deny
access from one particular host
hosts allow = @foonet
hosts deny = pirate
Note
Note that access still requires suitable user-level passwords. See
testparm(1) for a way of testing your host access to see if it does
what you expect.
Default: hosts allow = # none (i.e., all hosts permitted access)
Example: hosts allow = 150.203.5. myhost.mynet.edu.au
deny hosts
This parameter is a synonym for hosts deny.
hosts deny (S)
The opposite of hosts allow - hosts listed here are NOT permitted
access to services unless the specific services have their own lists
to override this one. Where the lists conflict, the allow list takes
precedence.
In the event that it is necessary to deny all by default, use the
keyword ALL (or the netmask 0.0.0.0/0) and then explicitly specify
to the hosts allow = hosts allow parameter those hosts that should
be permitted access.
Default: hosts deny = # none (i.e., no hosts specifically excluded)
Example: hosts deny = 150.203.4. badhost.mynet.edu.au
idmap alloc backend (G)
The idmap alloc backend provides a plugin interface for Winbind to
use when allocating Unix uids/gids for Windows SIDs. This option is
to be used in conjunction with the idmap domains parameter and
refers to the name of the idmap module which will provide the id
allocation functionality. Please refer to the man page for each
idmap plugin to determine whether or not the module implements the
allocation feature. The most common plugins are the tdb
(idmap_tdb(8)) and ldap (idmap_ldap(8)) libraries.
Also refer to the idmap alloc config option.
No default
Example: idmap alloc backend = tdb
idmap alloc config (G)
The idmap alloc config prefix provides a means of managing settings
for the backend defined by the idmap alloc backend parameter. Refer
to the man page for each idmap plugin regarding specific configura-
tion details.
No default
idmap backend (G)
The idmap backend provides a plugin interface for Winbind to use
varying backends to store SID/uid/gid mapping tables. This option is
mutually exclusive with the newer and more flexible idmap domains
parameter. The main difference between the "idmap backend" and the
"idmap domains" is that the former only allows on backend for all
domains while the latter supports configuring backends on a per
domain basis.
Examples of SID/uid/gid backends include tdb (idmap_tdb(8)), ldap
(idmap_ldap(8)), rid (idmap_rid(8)), and ad (idmap_tdb(8)).
Default: idmap backend = tdb
idmap cache time (G)
This parameter specifies the number of seconds that Winbind's idmap
interface will cache positive SID/uid/gid query results.
Default: idmap cache time = 900
idmap config (G)
The idmap config prefix provides a means of managing each domain
defined by the idmap domains option using Samba's parameteric option
support. The idmap config prefix should be followed by the name of
the domain, a colon, and a setting specific to the chosen backend.
There are three options available for all domains:
backend = backend_name
Specifies the name of the idmap plugin to use as the
SID/uid/gid backend for this domain.
default = [yes|no]
The default domain/backend will be used for searching for
users and groups not belonging to one of the explicitly listed
domains (matched by comparing the account SID and the domain
SID).
readonly = [yes|no]
Mark the domain as readonly which means that no attempts to
allocate a uid or gid (by the idmap alloc backend) for any
user or group in that domain will be attempted.
The following example illustrates how to configure the
idmap_ad(8) for the CORP domain and the idmap_tdb(8) backend for
all other domains. The TRUSTEDDOMAINS string is simply a key used
to reference the "idmap config" settings and does not represent
the actual name of a domain.
idmap domains = CORP TRUSTEDDOMAINS
idmap config CORP:backend = ad
idmap config CORP:readonly = yes
idmap config TRUSTEDDOMAINS:backend = tdb
idmap config TRUSTEDDOMAINS:default = yes
idmap config TRUSTEDDOMAINS:range = 1000 - 9999
No default
idmap domains (G)
The idmap domains option defines a list of Windows domains which
will each have a separately configured backend for managing Win-
bind's SID/uid/gid tables. This parameter is mutually exclusive with
the older idmap backend option.
Values consist of the short domain name for Winbind's primary or
collection of trusted domains. You may also use an arbitrary string
to represent a catchall domain backend for any domain not explicitly
listed.
Refer to the idmap config for details about managing the SID/uid/gid
backend for each domain.
No default
Example: idmap domains = default AD CORP
winbind gid
This parameter is a synonym for idmap gid.
idmap gid (G)
The idmap gid parameter specifies the range of group ids that are
allocated for the purpose of mapping UNX groups to NT group SIDs.
This range of group ids should have no existing local or NIS groups
within it as strange conflicts can occur otherwise.
See also the idmap backend, idmap domains, and idmap config options.
Default: idmap gid =
Example: idmap gid = 10000-20000
idmap negative cache time (G)
This parameter specifies the number of seconds that Winbind's idmap
interface will cache negative SID/uid/gid query results.
Default: idmap negative cache time = 120
winbind uid
This parameter is a synonym for idmap uid.
idmap uid (G)
The idmap uid parameter specifies the range of user ids that are
allocated for use in mapping UNIX users to NT user SIDs. This range
of ids should have no existing local or NIS users within it as
strange conflicts can occur otherwise.
See also the idmap backend, idmap domains, and idmap config options.
Default: idmap uid =
Example: idmap uid = 10000-20000
include (G)
This allows you to include one config file inside another. The file
is included literally, as though typed in place.
It takes the standard substitutions, except %u, %P and %S.
Default: include =
Example: include = /usr/local/samba/lib/admin_smb.conf
inherit acls (S)
This parameter can be used to ensure that if default acls exist on
parent directories, they are always honored when creating a new file
or subdirectory in these parent directories. The default behavior is
to use the unix mode specified when creating the directory. Enabling
this option sets the unix mode to 0777, thus guaranteeing that
default directory acls are propagated.
Default: inherit acls = no
inherit owner (S)
The ownership of new files and directories is normally governed by
effective uid of the connected user. This option allows the Samba
administrator to specify that the ownership for new files and direc-
tories should be controlled by the ownership of the parent direc-
tory.
Common scenarios where this behavior is useful is in implementing
drop-boxes where users can create and edit files but not delete them
and to ensure that newly create files in a user's roaming profile
directory are actually owner by the user.
Default: inherit owner = no
inherit permissions (S)
The permissions on new files and directories are normally governed
by create mask, directory mask, force create mode and force direc-
tory mode but the boolean inherit permissions parameter overrides
this.
New directories inherit the mode of the parent directory, including
bits such as setgid.
New files inherit their read/write bits from the parent directory.
Their execute bits continue to be determined by map archive, map
hidden and map system as usual.
Note that the setuid bit is never set via inheritance (the code
explicitly prohibits this).
This can be particularly useful on large systems with many users,
perhaps several thousand, to allow a single [homes] share to be used
flexibly by each user.
Default: inherit permissions = no
interfaces (G)
This option allows you to override the default network interfaces
list that Samba will use for browsing, name registration and other
NBT traffic. By default Samba will query the kernel for the list of
all active interfaces and use any interfaces except 127.0.0.1 that
are broadcast capable.
The option takes a list of interface strings. Each string can be in
any of the following forms:
o a network interface name (such as eth0). This may include
shell-like wildcards so eth* will match any interface starting
with the substring "eth"
o an IP address. In this case the netmask is determined from the
list of interfaces obtained from the kernel
o an IP/mask pair.
o a broadcast/mask pair.
The "mask" parameters can either be a bit length (such as 24 for
a C class network) or a full netmask in dotted decimal form.
The "IP" parameters above can either be a full dotted decimal IP
address or a hostname which will be looked up via the OS's normal
hostname resolution mechanisms.
By default Samba enables all active interfaces that are broadcast
capable except the loopback adaptor (IP address 127.0.0.1).
The example below configures three network interfaces correspond-
ing to the eth0 device and IP addresses 192.168.2.10 and
192.168.3.10. The netmasks of the latter two interfaces would be
set to 255.255.255.0.
Default: interfaces =
Example: interfaces = eth0 192.168.2.10/24
192.168.3.10/255.255.255.0
invalid users (S)
This is a list of users that should not be allowed to login to this
service. This is really a paranoid check to absolutely ensure an
improper setting does not breach your security.
A name starting with a '@' is interpreted as an NIS netgroup first
(if your system supports NIS), and then as a UNIX group if the name
was not found in the NIS netgroup database.
A name starting with '+' is interpreted only by looking in the UNIX
group database via the NSS getgrnam() interface. A name starting
with '&' is interpreted only by looking in the NIS netgroup database
(this requires NIS to be working on your system). The characters '+'
and '&' may be used at the start of the name in either order so the
value +&group means check the UNIX group database, followed by the
NIS netgroup database, and the value &+group means check the NIS
netgroup database, followed by the UNIX group database (the same as
the '@' prefix).
The current servicename is substituted for %S. This is useful in the
[homes] section.
Default: invalid users = # no invalid users
Example: invalid users = root fred admin @wheel
iprint server (G)
This parameter is only applicable if printing is set to iprint.
If set, this option overrides the ServerName option in the CUPS
client.conf. This is necessary if you have virtual samba servers
that connect to different CUPS daemons.
Default: iprint server = ""
Example: iprint server = MYCUPSSERVER
keepalive (G)
The value of the parameter (an integer) represents the number of
seconds between keepalive packets. If this parameter is zero, no
keepalive packets will be sent. Keepalive packets, if sent, allow
the server to tell whether a client is still present and responding.
Keepalives should, in general, not be needed if the socket has the
SO_KEEPALIVE attribute set on it by default. (see socket options).
Basically you should only use this option if you strike difficul-
ties.
Default: keepalive = 300
Example: keepalive = 600
kernel change notify (S)
This parameter specifies whether Samba should ask the kernel for
change notifications in directories so that SMB clients can refresh
whenever the data on the server changes.
This parameter is only used when your kernel supports change notifi-
cation to user programs using the inotify interface.
Default: kernel change notify = yes
kernel oplocks (G)
For UNIXes that support kernel based oplocks (currently only IRIX
and the Linux 2.4 kernel), this parameter allows the use of them to
be turned on or off.
Kernel oplocks support allows Samba oplocks to be broken whenever a
local UNIX process or NFS operation accesses a file that smbd(8) has
oplocked. This allows complete data consistency between SMB/CIFS,
NFS and local file access (and is a very cool feature :-).
This parameter defaults to on, but is translated to a no-op on sys-
tems that no not have the necessary kernel support. You should never
need to touch this parameter.
Default: kernel oplocks = yes
lanman auth (G)
This parameter determines whether or not smbd(8) will attempt to
authenticate users or permit password changes using the LANMAN pass-
word hash. If disabled, only clients which support NT password
hashes (e.g. Windows NT/2000 clients, smbclient, but not Windows
95/98 or the MS DOS network client) will be able to connect to the
Samba host.
The LANMAN encrypted response is easily broken, due to it's case-
insensitive nature, and the choice of algorithm. Servers without
Windows 95/98/ME or MS DOS clients are advised to disable this
option.
Unlike the encrypt passwords option, this parameter cannot alter
client behaviour, and the LANMAN response will still be sent over
the network. See the client lanman auth to disable this for Samba's
clients (such as smbclient)
If this option, and ntlm auth are both disabled, then only NTLMv2
logins will be permited. Not all clients support NTLMv2, and most
will require special configuration to use it.
Default: lanman auth = yes
large readwrite (G)
This parameter determines whether or not smbd(8) supports the new
64k streaming read and write varient SMB requests introduced with
Windows 2000. Note that due to Windows 2000 client redirector bugs
this requires Samba to be running on a 64-bit capable operating sys-
tem such as IRIX, Solaris or a Linux 2.4 kernel. Can improve perfor-
mance by 10% with Windows 2000 clients. Defaults to on. Not as
tested as some other Samba code paths.
Default: large readwrite = yes
ldap admin dn (G)
The ldap admin dn defines the Distinguished Name (DN) name used by
Samba to contact the ldap server when retreiving user account infor-
mation. The ldap admin dn is used in conjunction with the admin dn
password stored in the private/secrets.tdb file. See the smb-
passwd(8) man page for more information on how to accomplish this.
The ldap admin dn requires a fully specified DN. The ldap suffix is
not appended to the ldap admin dn.
No default
ldap delete dn (G)
This parameter specifies whether a delete operation in the ldapsam
deletes the complete entry or only the attributes specific to Samba.
Default: ldap delete dn = no
ldap group suffix (G)
This parameter specifies the suffix that is used for groups when
these are added to the LDAP directory. If this parameter is unset,
the value of ldap suffix will be used instead. The suffix string is
pre-pended to the ldap suffix string so use a partial DN.
Default: ldap group suffix =
Example: ldap group suffix = ou=Groups
ldap idmap suffix (G)
This parameters specifies the suffix that is used when storing idmap
mappings. If this parameter is unset, the value of ldap suffix will
be used instead. The suffix string is pre-pended to the ldap suffix
string so use a partial DN.
Default: ldap idmap suffix =
Example: ldap idmap suffix = ou=Idmap
ldap machine suffix (G)
It specifies where machines should be added to the ldap tree. If
this parameter is unset, the value of ldap suffix will be used
instead. The suffix string is pre-pended to the ldap suffix string
so use a partial DN.
Default: ldap machine suffix =
Example: ldap machine suffix = ou=Computers
ldap passwd sync (G)
This option is used to define whether or not Samba should sync the
LDAP password with the NT and LM hashes for normal accounts (NOT for
workstation, server or domain trusts) on a password change via
SAMBA.
The ldap passwd sync can be set to one of three values:
o Yes = Try to update the LDAP, NT and LM passwords and update
the pwdLastSet time.
o No = Update NT and LM passwords and update the pwdLastSet
time.
o Only = Only update the LDAP password and let the LDAP server
do the rest.
Default: ldap passwd sync = no
ldap replication sleep (G)
When Samba is asked to write to a read-only LDAP replica, we are
redirected to talk to the read-write master server. This server then
replicates our changes back to the 'local' server, however the
replication might take some seconds, especially over slow links.
Certain client activities, particularly domain joins, can become
confused by the 'success' that does not immediately change the LDAP
back-end's data.
This option simply causes Samba to wait a short time, to allow the
LDAP server to catch up. If you have a particularly high-latency
network, you may wish to time the LDAP replication with a network
sniffer, and increase this value accordingly. Be aware that no
checking is performed that the data has actually replicated.
The value is specified in milliseconds, the maximum value is 5000 (5
seconds).
Default: ldap replication sleep = 1000
ldapsam:editposix (G)
Editposix is an option that leverages ldapsam:trusted to make it
simpler to manage a domain controller eliminating the need to set up
custom scripts to add and manage the posix users and groups. This
option will instead directly manipulate the ldap tree to create,
remove and modify user and group entries. This option also requires
a running winbindd as it is used to allocate new uids/gids on
user/group creation. The allocation range must be therefore config-
ured.
To use this option, a basic ldap tree must be provided and the ldap
suffix parameters must be properly configured. On virgin servers the
default users and groups (Administrator, Guest, Domain Users, Domain
Admins, Domain Guests) can be precreated with the command net sam
provision. To run this command the ldap server must be running,
Winindd must be running and the smb.conf ldap options must be prop-
erly configured. The typical ldap setup used with the ldap-
sam:trusted = yes option is usually sufficient to use ldapsam:edit-
posix = yes as well.
An example configuration can be the following:
encrypt passwords = true
passdb backend = ldapsam
ldapsam:trusted=yes
ldapsam:editposix=yes
ldap admin dn = cn=admin,dc=samba,dc=org
ldap delete dn = yes
ldap group suffix = ou=groups
ldap idmap suffix = ou=idmap
ldap machine suffix = ou=computers
ldap user suffix = ou=users
ldap suffix = dc=samba,dc=org
idmap backend = ldap:"ldap://localhost"
idmap uid = 5000-50000
idmap gid = 5000-50000
This configuration assume the ldap server have been loaded with a
base tree like described in the following ldif:
dn: dc=samba,dc=org
objectClass: top
objectClass: dcObject
objectClass: organization
o: samba.org
dc: samba
dn: cn=admin,dc=samba,dc=org
objectClass: simpleSecurityObject
objectClass: organizationalRole
cn: admin
description: LDAP administrator
userPassword: secret
dn: ou=users,dc=samba,dc=org
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalUnit
ou: users
dn: ou=groups,dc=samba,dc=org
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalUnit
ou: groups
dn: ou=idmap,dc=samba,dc=org
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalUnit
ou: idmap
dn: ou=computers,dc=samba,dc=org
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalUnit
ou: computers
Default: ldapsam:editposix = no
ldapsam:trusted (G)
By default, Samba as a Domain Controller with an LDAP backend needs
to use the Unix-style NSS subsystem to access user and group infor-
mation. Due to the way Unix stores user information in /etc/passwd
and /etc/group this inevitably leads to inefficiencies. One impor-
tant question a user needs to know is the list of groups he is mem-
ber of. The plain UNIX model involves a complete enumeration of the
file /etc/group and its NSS counterparts in LDAP. UNIX has optimized
functions to enumerate group membership. Sadly, other functions that
are used to deal with user and group attributes lack such optimiza-
tion.
To make Samba scale well in large environments, the ldapsam:trusted
= yes option assumes that the complete user and group database that
is relevant to Samba is stored in LDAP with the standard posixAc-
count/posixGroup attributes. It further assumes that the Samba aux-
iliary object classes are stored together with the POSIX data in the
same LDAP object. If these assumptions are met, ldapsam:trusted =
yes can be activated and Samba can bypass the NSS system to query
user group memberships. Optimized LDAP queries can greatly speed up
domain logon and administration tasks. Depending on the size of the
LDAP database a factor of 100 or more for common queries is easily
achieved.
Default: ldapsam:trusted = no
ldap ssl (G)
This option is used to define whether or not Samba should use SSL
when connecting to the ldap server This is NOT related to Samba's
previous SSL support which was enabled by specifying the --with-ssl
option to the configure script.
The ldap ssl can be set to one of three values:
o Off = Never use SSL when querying the directory.
o Start_tls = Use the LDAPv3 StartTLS extended operation
(RFC2830) for communicating with the directory server.
o On = Use SSL on the ldaps port when contacting the ldap
server. Only available when the backwards-compatiblity --with-
ldapsam option is specified to configure. See passdb backend
.RE
Default: ldap ssl = start_tls
ldap suffix (G)
Specifies the base for all ldap suffixes and for storing the sam-
baDomain object.
The ldap suffix will be appended to the values specified for the
ldap user suffix, ldap group suffix, ldap machine suffix, and the
ldap idmap suffix. Each of these should be given only a DN rela-
tive to the ldap suffix.
Default: ldap suffix =
Example: ldap suffix = dc=samba,dc=org
ldap timeout (G)
When Samba connects to an ldap server that servermay be down or
unreachable. To prevent Samba from hanging whilst waiting for the
connection this parameter specifies in seconds how long Samba
should wait before failing the connect. The default is to only
wait fifteen seconds for the ldap server to respond to the con-
nect request.
Default: ldap timeout = 15
ldap user suffix (G)
This parameter specifies where users are added to the tree. If
this parameter is unset, the value of ldap suffix will be used
instead. The suffix string is pre-pended to the ldap suffix
string so use a partial DN.
Default: ldap user suffix =
Example: ldap user suffix = ou=people
level2 oplocks (S)
This parameter controls whether Samba supports level2 (read-only)
oplocks on a share.
Level2, or read-only oplocks allow Windows NT clients that have
an oplock on a file to downgrade from a read-write oplock to a
read-only oplock once a second client opens the file (instead of
releasing all oplocks on a second open, as in traditional, exclu-
sive oplocks). This allows all openers of the file that support
level2 oplocks to cache the file for read-ahead only (ie. they
may not cache writes or lock requests) and increases performance
for many accesses of files that are not commonly written (such as
application .EXE files).
Once one of the clients which have a read-only oplock writes to
the file all clients are notified (no reply is needed or waited
for) and told to break their oplocks to "none" and delete any
read-ahead caches.
It is recommended that this parameter be turned on to speed
access to shared executables.
For more discussions on level2 oplocks see the CIFS spec.
Currently, if kernel oplocks are supported then level2 oplocks
are not granted (even if this parameter is set to yes). Note
also, the oplocks parameter must be set to yes on this share in
order for this parameter to have any effect.
Default: level2 oplocks = yes
lm announce (G)
This parameter determines if nmbd(8) will produce Lanman announce
broadcasts that are needed by OS/2 clients in order for them to
see the Samba server in their browse list. This parameter can
have three values, yes, no, or auto. The default is auto. If set
to no Samba will never produce these broadcasts. If set to yes
Samba will produce Lanman announce broadcasts at a frequency set
by the parameter lm interval. If set to auto Samba will not send
Lanman announce broadcasts by default but will listen for them.
If it hears such a broadcast on the wire it will then start send-
ing them at a frequency set by the parameter lm interval.
Default: lm announce = auto
Example: lm announce = yes
lm interval (G)
If Samba is set to produce Lanman announce broadcasts needed by
OS/2 clients (see the lm announce parameter) then this parameter
defines the frequency in seconds with which they will be made. If
this is set to zero then no Lanman announcements will be made
despite the setting of the lm announce parameter.
Default: lm interval = 60
Example: lm interval = 120
load printers (G)
A boolean variable that controls whether all printers in the
printcap will be loaded for browsing by default. See the printers
section for more details.
Default: load printers = yes
local master (G)
This option allows nmbd(8) to try and become a local master
browser on a subnet. If set to no then nmbd will not attempt to
become a local master browser on a subnet and will also lose in
all browsing elections. By default this value is set to yes. Set-
ting this value to yes doesn't mean that Samba will become the
local master browser on a subnet, just that nmbd will participate
in elections for local master browser.
Setting this value to no will cause nmbd never to become a local
master browser.
Default: local master = yes
lock dir
This parameter is a synonym for lock directory.
lock directory (G)
This option specifies the directory where lock files will be
placed. The lock files are used to implement the max connections
option.
Default: lock directory = ${prefix}/var/locks
Example: lock directory = /var/run/samba/locks
locking (S)
This controls whether or not locking will be performed by the
server in response to lock requests from the client.
If locking = no, all lock and unlock requests will appear to suc-
ceed and all lock queries will report that the file in question
is available for locking.
If locking = yes, real locking will be performed by the server.
This option may be useful for read-only filesystems which may not
need locking (such as CDROM drives), although setting this param-
eter of no is not really recommended even in this case.
Be careful about disabling locking either globally or in a spe-
cific service, as lack of locking may result in data corruption.
You should never need to set this parameter.
No default
lock spin count (G)
This parameter has been made inoperative in Samba 3.0.24. The
functionality it contolled is now controlled by the parameter
lock spin time.
Default: lock spin count = 0
lock spin time (G)
The time in microseconds that smbd should keep waiting to see if
a failed lock request can be granted. This parameter has changed
in default value from Samba 3.0.23 from 10 to 200. The associated
lock spin count parameter is no longer used in Samba 3.0.24. You
should not need to change the value of this parameter.
Default: lock spin time = 200
log file (G)
This option allows you to override the name of the Samba log file
(also known as the debug file).
This option takes the standard substitutions, allowing you to
have separate log files for each user or machine.
No default
Example: log file = /usr/local/samba/var/log.%m
debuglevel
This parameter is a synonym for log level.
log level (G)
The value of the parameter (a astring) allows the debug level
(logging level) to be specified in the smb.conf file. This param-
eter has been extended since the 2.2.x series, now it allow to
specify the debug level for multiple debug classes. This is to
give greater flexibility in the configuration of the system.
The default will be the log level specified on the command line
or level zero if none was specified.
No default
Example: log level = 3 passdb:5 auth:10 winbind:2
logon drive (G)
This parameter specifies the local path to which the home direc-
tory will be connected (see logon home) and is only used by NT
Workstations.
Note that this option is only useful if Samba is set up as a
logon server.
Default: logon drive =
Example: logon drive = h:
logon home (G)
This parameter specifies the home directory location when a
Win95/98 or NT Workstation logs into a Samba PDC. It allows you
to do
C:>NET USE H: /HOME
from a command prompt, for example.
This option takes the standard substitutions, allowing you to
have separate logon scripts for each user or machine.
This parameter can be used with Win9X workstations to ensure that
roaming profiles are stored in a subdirectory of the user's home
directory. This is done in the following way:
logon home = \\%N\%U\profile
This tells Samba to return the above string, with substitutions
made when a client requests the info, generally in a NetUserGet-
Info request. Win9X clients truncate the info to \serverre when a
user does net use /home but use the whole string when dealing
with profiles.
Note that in prior versions of Samba, the logon path was returned
rather than logon home. This broke net use /home but allowed pro-
files outside the home directory. The current implementation is
correct, and can be used for profiles if you use the above trick.
Disable this feature by setting logon home = "" - using the empty
string.
This option is only useful if Samba is set up as a logon server.
Default: logon home = \\%N\%U
Example: logon home = \\remote_smb_server\%U
logon path (G)
This parameter specifies the directory where roaming profiles
(Desktop, NTuser.dat, etc) are stored. Contrary to previous ver-
sions of these manual pages, it has nothing to do with Win 9X
roaming profiles. To find out how to handle roaming profiles for
Win 9X system, see the logon home parameter.
This option takes the standard substitutions, allowing you to
have separate logon scripts for each user or machine. It also
specifies the directory from which the "Application Data", desk-
top, start menu, network neighborhood, programs and other fold-
ers, and their contents, are loaded and displayed on your Windows
NT client.
The share and the path must be readable by the user for the pref-
erences and directories to be loaded onto the Windows NT client.
The share must be writeable when the user logs in for the first
time, in order that the Windows NT client can create the
NTuser.dat and other directories. Thereafter, the directories and
any of the contents can, if required, be made read-only. It is
not advisable that the NTuser.dat file be made read-only - rename
it to NTuser.man to achieve the desired effect (a MANdatory pro-
file).
Windows clients can sometimes maintain a connection to the
[homes] share, even though there is no user logged in. Therefore,
it is vital that the logon path does not include a reference to
the homes share (i.e. setting this parameter to \%Nesrofile_path
will cause problems).
This option takes the standard substitutions, allowing you to
have separate logon scripts for each user or machine.
Warning
Do not quote the value. Setting this as \%NrofileU
will break profile handling. Where the tdbsam or ldapsam passdb
backend is used, at the time the user account is created the
value configured for this parameter is written to the passdb
backend and that value will over-ride the parameter value present
in the smb.conf file. Any error present in the passdb backend
account record must be editted using the appropriate tool (pdbe-
dit on the command-line, or any other locally provided system
tool). Note that this option is only useful if Samba is set up
as a domain controller.
Disable the use of roaming profiles by setting the value of this
parameter to the empty string. For example, logon path = "". Take
note that even if the default setting in the smb.conf file is the
empty string, any value specified in the user account settings in
the passdb backend will over-ride the effect of setting this
parameter to null. Disabling of all roaming profile use requires
that the user account settings must also be blank.
An example of use is:
logon path = \PROFILESERVERPROFILEU
Default: logon path = \\%N\%U\profile
logon script (G)
This parameter specifies the batch file (.bat) or NT command file
(.cmd) to be downloaded and run on a machine when a user success-
fully logs in. The file must contain the DOS style CR/LF line
endings. Using a DOS-style editor to create the file is recom-
mended.
The script must be a relative path to the [netlogon] service. If
the [netlogon] service specifies a path of /usr/local/samba/netl-
ogon, and logon script = STARTUP.BAT, then the file that will be
downloaded is:
/usr/local/samba/netlogon/STARTUP.BAT
The contents of the batch file are entirely your choice. A sug-
gested command would be to add NET TIME \\SERVER /SET /YES, to
force every machine to synchronize clocks with the same time
server. Another use would be to add NET USE U: \\SERVER\UTILS for
commonly used utilities, or
NET USE Q: \SERVERISO9001_QA
for example.
Note that it is particularly important not to allow write access
to the [netlogon] share, or to grant users write permission on
the batch files in a secure environment, as this would allow the
batch files to be arbitrarily modified and security to be
breached.
This option takes the standard substitutions, allowing you to
have separate logon scripts for each user or machine.
This option is only useful if Samba is set up as a logon server.
Default: logon script =
Example: logon script = scripts\%U.bat
lppause command (S)
This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server
host in order to stop printing or spooling a specific print job.
This command should be a program or script which takes a printer
name and job number to pause the print job. One way of implement-
ing this is by using job priorities, where jobs having a too low
priority won't be sent to the printer.
If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. A %j
is replaced with the job number (an integer). On HPUX (see print-
ing=hpux ), if the -p%p option is added to the lpq command, the
job will show up with the correct status, i.e. if the job prior-
ity is lower than the set fence priority it will have the PAUSED
status, whereas if the priority is equal or higher it will have
the SPOOLED or PRINTING status.
Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the
lppause command as the PATH may not be available to the server.
Default: lppause command = # Currently no default value is given
to this string, unless the value of the printing parameter is
\fBSYSV\fR, in which case the default is : lp -i %p-%j -H hold or
if the value of the \fIprinting\fR parameter is \fBSOFTQ\fR, then
the default is: qstat -s -j%j -h.
Example: lppause command = /usr/bin/lpalt %p-%j -p0
lpq cache time (G)
This controls how long lpq info will be cached for to prevent the
lpq command being called too often. A separate cache is kept for
each variation of the lpq command used by the system, so if you
use different lpq commands for different users then they won't
share cache information.
The cache files are stored in /tmp/lpq.xxxx where xxxx is a hash
of the lpq command in use.
The default is 30 seconds, meaning that the cached results of a
previous identical lpq command will be used if the cached data is
less than 30 seconds old. A large value may be advisable if your
lpq command is very slow.
A value of 0 will disable caching completely.
Default: lpq cache time = 30
Example: lpq cache time = 10
lpq command (S)
This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server
host in order to obtain lpq-style printer status information.
This command should be a program or script which takes a printer
name as its only parameter and outputs printer status informa-
tion.
Currently nine styles of printer status information are sup-
ported; BSD, AIX, LPRNG, PLP, SYSV, HPUX, QNX, CUPS, and SOFTQ.
This covers most UNIX systems. You control which type is expected
using the printing = option.
Some clients (notably Windows for Workgroups) may not correctly
send the connection number for the printer they are requesting
status information about. To get around this, the server reports
on the first printer service connected to by the client. This
only happens if the connection number sent is invalid.
If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. Oth-
erwise it is placed at the end of the command.
Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the
lpq command as the $PATH may not be available to the server. When
compiled with the CUPS libraries, no lpq command is needed
because smbd will make a library call to obtain the print queue
listing.
Default: lpq command =
Example: lpq command = /usr/bin/lpq -P%p
lpresume command (S)
This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server
host in order to restart or continue printing or spooling a spe-
cific print job.
This command should be a program or script which takes a printer
name and job number to resume the print job. See also the lppause
command parameter.
If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. A %j
is replaced with the job number (an integer).
Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the
lpresume command as the PATH may not be available to the server.
See also the printing parameter.
Default: Currently no default value is given to this string,
unless the value of the printing parameter is SYSV, in which case
the default is :
lp -i %p-%j -H resume
or if the value of the printing parameter is SOFTQ, then the
default is:
qstat -s -j%j -r
Default: lpresume command = lpresume command = /usr/bin/lpalt
%p-%j -p2
lprm command (S)
This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server
host in order to delete a print job.
This command should be a program or script which takes a printer
name and job number, and deletes the print job.
If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. A %j
is replaced with the job number (an integer).
Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the
lprm command as the PATH may not be available to the server.
Examples of use are:
lprm command = /usr/bin/lprm -P%p %j
or
lprm command = /usr/bin/cancel %p-%j
Default: lprm command = determined by printing parameter
machine password timeout (G)
If a Samba server is a member of a Windows NT Domain (see the
security = domain parameter) then periodically a running smbd
process will try and change the MACHINE ACCOUNT PASSWORD stored
in the TDB called private/secrets.tdb . This parameter specifies
how often this password will be changed, in seconds. The default
is one week (expressed in seconds), the same as a Windows NT
Domain member server.
See also smbpasswd(8), and the security = domain parameter.
Default: machine password timeout = 604800
magic output (S)
This parameter specifies the name of a file which will contain
output created by a magic script (see the magic script parameter
below).
Warning
If two clients use the same magic script in the same directory
the output file content is undefined. Default: magic output =
<magic script name>.out
Example: magic output = myfile.txt
magic script (S)
This parameter specifies the name of a file which, if opened,
will be executed by the server when the file is closed. This
allows a UNIX script to be sent to the Samba host and executed on
behalf of the connected user.
Scripts executed in this way will be deleted upon completion
assuming that the user has the appropriate level of privilege and
the file permissions allow the deletion.
If the script generates output, output will be sent to the file
specified by the magic output parameter (see above).
Note that some shells are unable to interpret scripts containing
CR/LF instead of CR as the end-of-line marker. Magic scripts must
be executable as is on the host, which for some hosts and some
shells will require filtering at the DOS end.
Magic scripts are EXPERIMENTAL and should NOT be relied upon.
Default: magic script =
Example: magic script = user.csh
mangled map (S)
This is for those who want to directly map UNIX file names which
cannot be represented on Windows/DOS. The mangling of names is
not always what is needed. In particular you may have documents
with file extensions that differ between DOS and UNIX. For exam-
ple, under UNIX it is common to use .html for HTML files, whereas
under Windows/DOS .htm is more commonly used.
So to map html to htm you would use:
mangled map = (*.html *.htm).
One very useful case is to remove the annoying ;1 off the ends of
filenames on some CDROMs (only visible under some UNIXes). To do
this use a map of (*;1 *;).
Default: mangled map = # no mangled map
Example: mangled map = (*;1 *;)
mangled names (S)
This controls whether non-DOS names under UNIX should be mapped
to DOS-compatible names ("mangled") and made visible, or whether
non-DOS names should simply be ignored.
See the section on name mangling for details on how to control
the mangling process.
If mangling is used then the mangling algorithm is as follows:
o The first (up to) five alphanumeric characters before the
rightmost dot of the filename are preserved, forced to
upper case, and appear as the first (up to) five characters
of the mangled name.
o A tilde "~" is appended to the first part of the mangled
name, followed by a two-character unique sequence, based on
the original root name (i.e., the original filename minus
its final extension). The final extension is included in
the hash calculation only if it contains any upper case
characters or is longer than three characters.
Note that the character to use may be specified using the
mangling char option, if you don't like '~'.
o Files whose UNIX name begins with a dot will be presented
as DOS hidden files. The mangled name will be created as
for other filenames, but with the leading dot removed and
"___" as its extension regardless of actual original exten-
sion (that's three underscores).
The two-digit hash value consists of upper case alphanumeric
characters.
This algorithm can cause name collisions only if files in a
directory share the same first five alphanumeric characters.
The probability of such a clash is 1/1300.
The name mangling (if enabled) allows a file to be copied
between UNIX directories from Windows/DOS while retaining the
long UNIX filename. UNIX files can be renamed to a new exten-
sion from Windows/DOS and will retain the same basename. Man-
gled names do not change between sessions.
Default: mangled names = yes
mangle prefix (G)
controls the number of prefix characters from the original name
used when generating the mangled names. A larger value will give
a weaker hash and therefore more name collisions. The minimum
value is 1 and the maximum value is 6.
mangle prefix is effective only when mangling method is hash2.
Default: mangle prefix = 1
Example: mangle prefix = 4
mangling char (S)
This controls what character is used as the magic character in
name mangling. The default is a '~' but this may interfere with
some software. Use this option to set it to whatever you prefer.
This is effective only when mangling method is hash.
Default: mangling char = ~
Example: mangling char = ^
mangling method (G)
controls the algorithm used for the generating the mangled names.
Can take two different values, "hash" and "hash2". "hash" is the
algorithm that was used used in Samba for many years and was the
default in Samba 2.2.x "hash2" is now the default and is newer
and considered a better algorithm (generates less collisions) in
the names. Many Win32 applications store the mangled names and so
changing to algorithms must not be done lightly as these applica-
tions may break unless reinstalled.
Default: mangling method = hash2
Example: mangling method = hash
map acl inherit (S)
This boolean parameter controls whether smbd(8) will attempt to
map the 'inherit' and 'protected' access control entry flags
stored in Windows ACLs into an extended attribute called
user.SAMBA_PAI. This parameter only takes effect if Samba is
being run on a platform that supports extended attributes (Linux
and IRIX so far) and allows the Windows 2000 ACL editor to cor-
rectly use inheritance with the Samba POSIX ACL mapping code.
Default: map acl inherit = no
map archive (S)
This controls whether the DOS archive attribute should be mapped
to the UNIX owner execute bit. The DOS archive bit is set when a
file has been modified since its last backup. One motivation for
this option is to keep Samba/your PC from making any file it
touches from becoming executable under UNIX. This can be quite
annoying for shared source code, documents, etc...
Note that this requires the create mask parameter to be set such
that owner execute bit is not masked out (i.e. it must include
100). See the parameter create mask for details.
Default: map archive = yes
map hidden (S)
This controls whether DOS style hidden files should be mapped to
the UNIX world execute bit.
Note that this requires the create mask to be set such that the
world execute bit is not masked out (i.e. it must include 001).
See the parameter create mask for details.
No default
map read only (S)
This controls how the DOS read only attribute should be mapped
from a UNIX filesystem.
This parameter can take three different values, which tell
smbd(8) how to display the read only attribute on files, where
either store dos attributes is set to No, or no extended
attribute is present. If store dos attributes is set to yes then
this parameter is ignored. This is a new parameter introduced in
Samba version 3.0.21.
The three settings are :
o Yes - The read only DOS attribute is mapped to the inverse
of the user or owner write bit in the unix permission mode
set. If the owner write bit is not set, the read only
attribute is reported as being set on the file.
o Permissions - The read only DOS attribute is mapped to the
effective permissions of the connecting user, as evaluated
by smbd(8) by reading the unix permissions and POSIX ACL
(if present). If the connecting user does not have permis-
sion to modify the file, the read only attribute is
reported as being set on the file.
o No - The read only DOS attribute is unaffected by permis-
sions, and can only be set by the store dos attributes
method. This may be useful for exporting mounted CDs.
Default: map read only = yes
map system (S)
This controls whether DOS style system files should be mapped to
the UNIX group execute bit.
Note that this requires the create mask to be set such that the
group execute bit is not masked out (i.e. it must include 010).
See the parameter create mask for details.
Default: map system = no
map to guest (G)
This parameter is only useful in SECURITY = security modes other
than security = share and security = server - i.e. user, and
domain.
This parameter can take four different values, which tell smbd(8)
what to do with user login requests that don't match a valid UNIX
user in some way.
The four settings are :
o Never - Means user login requests with an invalid password
are rejected. This is the default.
o Bad User - Means user logins with an invalid password are
rejected, unless the username does not exist, in which case
it is treated as a guest login and mapped into the guest
account.
o Bad Password - Means user logins with an invalid password
are treated as a guest login and mapped into the guest
account. Note that this can cause problems as it means that
any user incorrectly typing their password will be silently
logged on as "guest" - and will not know the reason they
cannot access files they think they should - there will
have been no message given to them that they got their
password wrong. Helpdesk services will hate you if you set
the map to guest parameter this way :-).
o Bad Uid - Is only applicable when Samba is configured in
some type of domain mode security (security = {domain|ads})
and means that user logins which are successfully authenti-
cated but which have no valid Unix user account (and smbd
is unable to create one) should be mapped to the defined
guest account. This was the default behavior of Samba 2.x
releases. Note that if a member server is running winbindd,
this option should never be required because the nss_win-
bind library will export the Windows domain users and
groups to the underlying OS via the Name Service Switch
interface.
Note that this parameter is needed to set up "Guest" share
services when using security modes other than share and
server. This is because in these modes the name of the
resource being requested is not sent to the server until after
the server has successfully authenticated the client so the
server cannot make authentication decisions at the correct
time (connection to the share) for "Guest" shares. This param-
eter is not useful with security = server as in this security
mode no information is returned about whether a user logon
failed due to a bad username or bad password, the same error
is returned from a modern server in both cases.
For people familiar with the older Samba releases, this param-
eter maps to the old compile-time setting of the
GUEST_SESSSETUP value in local.h.
Default: map to guest = Never
Example: map to guest = Bad User
max connections (S)
This option allows the number of simultaneous connections to a
service to be limited. If max connections is greater than 0 then
connections will be refused if this number of connections to the
service are already open. A value of zero mean an unlimited num-
ber of connections may be made.
Record lock files are used to implement this feature. The lock
files will be stored in the directory specified by the lock
directory option.
Default: max connections = 0
Example: max connections = 10
max disk size (G)
This option allows you to put an upper limit on the apparent size
of disks. If you set this option to 100 then all shares will
appear to be not larger than 100 MB in size.
Note that this option does not limit the amount of data you can
put on the disk. In the above case you could still store much
more than 100 MB on the disk, but if a client ever asks for the
amount of free disk space or the total disk size then the result
will be bounded by the amount specified in max disk size.
This option is primarily useful to work around bugs in some
pieces of software that can't handle very large disks, particu-
larly disks over 1GB in size.
A max disk size of 0 means no limit.
Default: max disk size = 0
Example: max disk size = 1000
max log size (G)
This option (an integer in kilobytes) specifies the max size the
log file should grow to. Samba periodically checks the size and
if it is exceeded it will rename the file, adding a .old exten-
sion.
A size of 0 means no limit.
Default: max log size = 5000
Example: max log size = 1000
max mux (G)
This option controls the maximum number of outstanding simultane-
ous SMB operations that Samba tells the client it will allow. You
should never need to set this parameter.
Default: max mux = 50
max open files (G)
This parameter limits the maximum number of open files that one
smbd(8) file serving process may have open for a client at any
one time. The default for this parameter is set very high
(10,000) as Samba uses only one bit per unopened file.
The limit of the number of open files is usually set by the UNIX
per-process file descriptor limit rather than this parameter so
you should never need to touch this parameter.
Default: max open files = 10000
max print jobs (S)
This parameter limits the maximum number of jobs allowable in a
Samba printer queue at any given moment. If this number is
exceeded, smbd(8) will remote "Out of Space" to the client.
Default: max print jobs = 1000
Example: max print jobs = 5000
protocol
This parameter is a synonym for max protocol.
max protocol (G)
The value of the parameter (a string) is the highest protocol
level that will be supported by the server.
Possible values are :
o CORE: Earliest version. No concept of user names.
o COREPLUS: Slight improvements on CORE for efficiency.
o LANMAN1: First
modern version of the protocol. Long filename support.
o LANMAN2: Updates to Lanman1 protocol.
o NT1: Current up to date version of the protocol. Used by
Windows NT. Known as CIFS.
Normally this option should not be set as the automatic nego-
tiation phase in the SMB protocol takes care of choosing the
appropriate protocol.
Default: max protocol = NT1
Example: max protocol = LANMAN1
max reported print jobs (S)
This parameter limits the maximum number of jobs displayed in a
port monitor for Samba printer queue at any given moment. If this
number is exceeded, the excess jobs will not be shown. A value of
zero means there is no limit on the number of print jobs
reported.
Default: max reported print jobs = 0
Example: max reported print jobs = 1000
max smbd processes (G)
This parameter limits the maximum number of smbd(8) processes
concurrently running on a system and is intended as a stopgap to
prevent degrading service to clients in the event that the server
has insufficient resources to handle more than this number of
connections. Remember that under normal operating conditions,
each user will have an smbd(8) associated with him or her to han-
dle connections to all shares from a given host.
Default: max smbd processes = 0
Example: max smbd processes = 1000
max stat cache size (G)
This parameter limits the size in memory of any stat cache being
used to speed up case insensitive name mappings. This parameter
is the number of kilobyte (1024) units the stat cache can use. A
value of zero means unlimited which is not advised aѕ it
can use a lot of memory. You should not need to change this
parameter.
Default: max stat cache size = 1024
Example: max stat cache size = 100
max ttl (G)
This option tells nmbd(8) what the default 'time to live' of Net-
BIOS names should be (in seconds) when nmbd is requesting a name
using either a broadcast packet or from a WINS server. You should
never need to change this parameter. The default is 3 days.
Default: max ttl = 259200
max wins ttl (G)
This option tells smbd(8) when acting as a WINS server (wins sup-
port = yes) what the maximum 'time to live' of NetBIOS names that
nmbd will grant will be (in seconds). You should never need to
change this parameter. The default is 6 days (518400 seconds).
Default: max wins ttl = 518400
max xmit (G)
This option controls the maximum packet size that will be negoti-
ated by Samba. The default is 16644, which matches the behavior
of Windows 2000. A value below 2048 is likely to cause problems.
You should never need to change this parameter from its default
value.
Default: max xmit = 16644
Example: max xmit = 8192
message command (G)
This specifies what command to run when the server receives a
WinPopup style message.
This would normally be a command that would deliver the message
somehow. How this is to be done is up to your imagination.
An example is:
message command = csh -c 'xedit %s;rm %s' &
This delivers the message using xedit, then removes it after-
wards. NOTE THAT IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT THIS COMMAND RETURN
IMMEDIATELY. That's why I have the '&' on the end. If it doesn't
return immediately then your PCs may freeze when sending messages
(they should recover after 30 seconds, hopefully).
All messages are delivered as the global guest user. The command
takes the standard substitutions, although
%u won't work (%U may be better in this case).
Apart from the standard substitutions, some additional ones
apply. In particular:
o %s = the filename containing the message.
o %t = the destination that the message was sent to (probably
the server name).
o %f = who the message is from.
You could make this command send mail, or whatever else takes
your fancy. Please let us know of any really interesting ideas
you have.
Here's a way of sending the messages as mail to root:
message command = /bin/mail -s 'message from %f on %m' root < %s; rm %s
If you don't have a message command then the message won't be
delivered and Samba will tell the sender there was an error.
Unfortunately WfWg totally ignores the error code and carries
on regardless, saying that the message was delivered.
If you want to silently delete it then try:
message command = rm %s
Default: message command =
Example: message command = csh -c 'xedit %s; rm %s' &
min print space (S)
This sets the minimum amount of free disk space that must be
available before a user will be able to spool a print job. It is
specified in kilobytes. The default is 0, which means a user can
always spool a print job.
Default: min print space = 0
Example: min print space = 2000
min protocol (G)
The value of the parameter (a string) is the lowest SMB protocol
dialect than Samba will support. Please refer to the max protocol
parameter for a list of valid protocol names and a brief descrip-
tion of each. You may also wish to refer to the C source code in
source/smbd/negprot.c for a listing of known protocol dialects
supported by clients.
If you are viewing this parameter as a security measure, you
should also refer to the lanman auth parameter. Otherwise, you
should never need to change this parameter.
Default: min protocol = CORE
Example: min protocol = NT1
min wins ttl (G)
This option tells nmbd(8) when acting as a WINS server (wins sup-
port = yes) what the minimum 'time to live' of NetBIOS names that
nmbd will grant will be (in seconds). You should never need to
change this parameter. The default is 6 hours (21600 seconds).
Default: min wins ttl = 21600
msdfs proxy (S)
This parameter indicates that the share is a stand-in for another
CIFS share whose location is specified by the value of the param-
eter. When clients attempt to connect to this share, they are
redirected to the proxied share using the SMB-Dfs protocol.
Only Dfs roots can act as proxy shares. Take a look at the msdfs
root and host msdfs options to find out how to set up a Dfs root
share.
No default
Example: msdfs proxy = \\otherserver\someshare
msdfs root (S)
If set to yes, Samba treats the share as a Dfs root and allows
clients to browse the distributed file system tree rooted at the
share directory. Dfs links are specified in the share directory
by symbolic links of the form msdfs:serverA\shareA,serverB\shareB
and so on. For more information on setting up a Dfs tree on
Samba, refer to the MSDFS chapter in the Samba3-HOWTO book.
Default: msdfs root = no
name cache timeout (G)
Specifies the number of seconds it takes before entries in
samba's hostname resolve cache time out. If the timeout is set to
0. the caching is disabled.
Default: name cache timeout = 660
Example: name cache timeout = 0
name resolve order (G)
This option is used by the programs in the Samba suite to deter-
mine what naming services to use and in what order to resolve
host names to IP addresses. Its main purpose to is to control how
netbios name resolution is performed. The option takes a space
separated string of name resolution options.
The options are: "lmhosts", "host", "wins" and "bcast". They
cause names to be resolved as follows:
o lmhosts : Lookup an IP address in the Samba lmhosts file.
If the line in lmhosts has no name type attached to the
NetBIOS name (see the manpage for lmhosts for details) then
any name type matches for lookup.
o host : Do a standard host name to IP address resolution,
using the system /etc/hosts , NIS, or DNS lookups. This
method of name resolution is operating system depended for
instance on IRIX or Solaris this may be controlled by the
/etc/nsswitch.conf file. Note that this method is used only
if the NetBIOS name type being queried is the 0x20 (server)
name type or 0x1c (domain controllers). The latter case is
only useful for active directory domains and results in a
DNS query for the SRV RR entry matching _ldap._tcp.domain.
o wins : Query a name with the IP address listed in the
WINSSERVER parameter. If no WINS server has been specified
this method will be ignored.
o bcast : Do a broadcast on each of the known local inter-
faces listed in the interfaces parameter. This is the least
reliable of the name resolution methods as it depends on
the target host being on a locally connected subnet.
The example below will cause the local lmhosts file to be
examined first, followed by a broadcast attempt, followed by a
normal system hostname lookup.
When Samba is functioning in ADS security mode (security =
ads) it is advised to use following settings for name resolve
order:
name resolve order = wins bcast
DC lookups will still be done via DNS, but fallbacks to net-
bios names will not inundate your DNS servers with needless
querys for DOMAIN<0x1c> lookups.
Default: name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast
Example: name resolve order = lmhosts bcast host
netbios aliases (G)
This is a list of NetBIOS names that nmbd will advertise as addi-
tional names by which the Samba server is known. This allows one
machine to appear in browse lists under multiple names. If a
machine is acting as a browse server or logon server none of
these names will be advertised as either browse server or logon
servers, only the primary name of the machine will be advertised
with these capabilities.
Default: netbios aliases = # empty string (no additional names)
Example: netbios aliases = TEST TEST1 TEST2
netbios name (G)
This sets the NetBIOS name by which a Samba server is known. By
default it is the same as the first component of the host's DNS
name. If a machine is a browse server or logon server this name
(or the first component of the hosts DNS name) will be the name
that these services are advertised under.
There is a bug in Samba-3 that breaks operation of browsing and
access to shares if the netbios name is set to the literal name
PIPE. To avoid this problem, do not name your Samba-3 server
PIPE.
Default: netbios name = # machine DNS name
Example: netbios name = MYNAME
netbios scope (G)
This sets the NetBIOS scope that Samba will operate under. This
should not be set unless every machine on your LAN also sets this
value.
Default: netbios scope =
nis homedir (G)
Get the home share server from a NIS map. For UNIX systems that
use an automounter, the user's home directory will often be
mounted on a workstation on demand from a remote server.
When the Samba logon server is not the actual home directory
server, but is mounting the home directories via NFS then two
network hops would be required to access the users home directory
if the logon server told the client to use itself as the SMB
server for home directories (one over SMB and one over NFS). This
can be very slow.
This option allows Samba to return the home share as being on a
different server to the logon server and as long as a Samba dae-
mon is running on the home directory server, it will be mounted
on the Samba client directly from the directory server. When
Samba is returning the home share to the client, it will consult
the NIS map specified in homedir map and return the server listed
there.
Note that for this option to work there must be a working NIS
system and the Samba server with this option must also be a logon
server.
Default: nis homedir = no
nt acl support (S)
This boolean parameter controls whether smbd(8) will attempt to
map UNIX permissions into Windows NT access control lists. The
UNIX permissions considered are the the traditional UNIX owner
and group permissions, as well as POSIX ACLs set on any files or
directories. This parameter was formally a global parameter in
releases prior to 2.2.2.
Default: nt acl support = yes
ntlm auth (G)
This parameter determines whether or not smbd(8) will attempt to
authenticate users using the NTLM encrypted password response. If
disabled, either the lanman password hash or an NTLMv2 response
will need to be sent by the client.
If this option, and lanman auth are both disabled, then only
NTLMv2 logins will be permited. Not all clients support NTLMv2,
and most will require special configuration to us it.
Default: ntlm auth = yes
nt pipe support (G)
This boolean parameter controls whether smbd(8) will allow Win-
dows NT clients to connect to the NT SMB specific IPC$ pipes.
This is a developer debugging option and can be left alone.
Default: nt pipe support = yes
nt status support (G)
This boolean parameter controls whether smbd(8) will negotiate NT
specific status support with Windows NT/2k/XP clients. This is a
developer debugging option and should be left alone. If this
option is set to no then Samba offers exactly the same DOS error
codes that versions prior to Samba 2.2.3 reported.
You should not need to ever disable this parameter.
Default: nt status support = yes
null passwords (G)
Allow or disallow client access to accounts that have null pass-
words.
See also smbpasswd(5).
Default: null passwords = no
obey pam restrictions (G)
When Samba 3.0 is configured to enable PAM support (i.e. --with-
pam), this parameter will control whether or not Samba should
obey PAM's account and session management directives. The default
behavior is to use PAM for clear text authentication only and to
ignore any account or session management. Note that Samba always
ignores PAM for authentication in the case of encrypt passwords =
yes. The reason is that PAM modules cannot support the chal-
lenge/response authentication mechanism needed in the presence of
SMB password encryption.
Default: obey pam restrictions = no
only user (S)
This is a boolean option that controls whether connections with
usernames not in the user list will be allowed. By default this
option is disabled so that a client can supply a username to be
used by the server. Enabling this parameter will force the server
to only use the login names from the user list and is only really
useful in security = share level security.
Note that this also means Samba won't try to deduce usernames
from the service name. This can be annoying for the [homes] sec-
tion. To get around this you could use user = %S which means your
user list will be just the service name, which for home directo-
ries is the name of the user.
Default: only user = no
open files database hash size (G)
This parameter was added in Samba 3.0.23. This is an internal
tuning parameter that sets the hash size of the tdb used for the
open file databases. The presence of this parameter allows tuning
of the system for very large (thousands of concurrent users)
Samba setups. The default setting of this parameter should be
sufficient for most normal environments. It is advised not to
change this parameter unless advised to by a Samba Team member.
Default: open files database hash size = 10007
Example: open files database hash size = 1338457
oplock break wait time (G)
This is a tuning parameter added due to bugs in both Windows 9x
and WinNT. If Samba responds to a client too quickly when that
client issues an SMB that can cause an oplock break request, then
the network client can fail and not respond to the break request.
This tuning parameter (which is set in milliseconds) is the
amount of time Samba will wait before sending an oplock break
request to such (broken) clients.
Warning
DO NOT CHANGE THIS PARAMETER UNLESS YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTOOD
THE SAMBA OPLOCK CODE. Default: oplock break wait time = 0
oplock contention limit (S)
This is a very advanced smbd(8) tuning option to improve the
efficiency of the granting of oplocks under multiple client con-
tention for the same file.
In brief it specifies a number, which causes smbd(8)not to grant
an oplock even when requested if the approximate number of
clients contending for an oplock on the same file goes over this
limit. This causes smbd to behave in a similar way to Windows NT.
Warning
DO NOT CHANGE THIS PARAMETER UNLESS YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTOOD
THE SAMBA OPLOCK CODE. Default: oplock contention limit = 2
oplocks (S)
This boolean option tells smbd whether to issue oplocks (oppor-
tunistic locks) to file open requests on this share. The oplock
code can dramatically (approx. 30% or more) improve the speed of
access to files on Samba servers. It allows the clients to
aggressively cache files locally and you may want to disable this
option for unreliable network environments (it is turned on by
default in Windows NT Servers). For more information see the file
Speed.txt in the Samba docs/ directory.
Oplocks may be selectively turned off on certain files with a
share. See the veto oplock files parameter. On some systems
oplocks are recognized by the underlying operating system. This
allows data synchronization between all access to oplocked files,
whether it be via Samba or NFS or a local UNIX process. See the
kernel oplocks parameter for details.
Default: oplocks = yes
os2 driver map (G)
The parameter is used to define the absolute path to a file con-
taining a mapping of Windows NT printer driver names to OS/2
printer driver names. The format is:
<nt driver name> = <os2 driver name>.<device name>
For example, a valid entry using the HP LaserJet 5 printer driver
would appear as HP LaserJet 5L = LASERJET.HP LaserJet 5L.
The need for the file is due to the printer driver namespace
problem described in the chapter on Classical Printing in the
Samba3-HOWTO book. For more details on OS/2 clients, please refer
to chapter on other clients in the Samba3-HOWTO book.
Default: os2 driver map =
os level (G)
This integer value controls what level Samba advertises itself as
for browse elections. The value of this parameter determines
whether nmbd(8) has a chance of becoming a local master browser
for the workgroup in the local broadcast area.
Note :By default, Samba will win a local master browsing elec-
tion over all Microsoft operating systems except a Windows NT
4.0/2000 Domain Controller. This means that a misconfigured Samba
host can effectively isolate a subnet for browsing purposes. This
parameter is largely auto-configured in the Samba-3 release
series and it is seldom necessary to manually over-ride the
default setting. Please refer to chapter 9 of the Samba-3 HOWTO
document for further information regarding the use of this param-
eter.
Default: os level = 20
Example: os level = 65
pam password change (G)
With the addition of better PAM support in Samba 2.2, this param-
eter, it is possible to use PAM's password change control flag
for Samba. If enabled, then PAM will be used for password changes
when requested by an SMB client instead of the program listed in
passwd program. It should be possible to enable this without
changing your passwd chat parameter for most setups.
Default: pam password change = no
panic action (G)
This is a Samba developer option that allows a system command to
be called when either smbd(8) or smbd(8) crashes. This is usually
used to draw attention to the fact that a problem occurred.
Default: panic action =
Example: panic action = "/bin/sleep 90000"
paranoid server security (G)
Some version of NT 4.x allow non-guest users with a bad passowrd.
When this option is enabled, samba will not use a broken NT 4.x
server as password server, but instead complain to the logs and
exit.
Disabling this option prevents Samba from making this check,
which involves deliberatly attempting a bad logon to the remote
server.
Default: paranoid server security = yes
passdb backend (G)
This option allows the administrator to chose which backend will
be used for storing user and possibly group information. This
allows you to swap between dfferent storage mechanisms without
recompile.
The parameter value is divided into two parts, the backend's
name, and a 'location' string that has meaning only to that par-
ticular backed. These are separated by a : character.
Available backends can include:
o smbpasswd - The default smbpasswd backend. Takes a path to
the smbpasswd file as an optional argument.
o tdbsam - The TDB based password storage backend. Takes a
path to the TDB as an optional argument (defaults to
passdb.tdb in the private dir directory.
o ldapsam - The LDAP based passdb backend. Takes an LDAP URL
as an optional argument (defaults to ldap://localhost)
LDAP connections should be secured where possible. This may
be done using either Start-TLS (see ldap ssl) or by speci-
fying ldaps:// in the URL argument.
Multiple servers may also be specified in double-quotes, if
your LDAP libraries supports the LDAP URL notation. (OpenL-
DAP does).
Examples of use are:
passdb backend = tdbsam:/etc/samba/private/passdb.tdb
or
passdb backend = ldapsam:"ldap://ldap-1.example.com ldap://ldap-2.example.com"
Default: passdb backend = smbpasswd
passdb expand explicit (G)
This parameter controls whether Samba substitutes %-macros in the
passdb fields if they are explicitly set. We used to expand
macros here, but this turned out to be a bug because the Windows
client can expand a variable %G_osver% in which %G would have
been substituted by the user's primary group.
Default: passdb expand explicit = no
passwd chat (G)
This string controls the "chat" conversation that takes places
between smbd(8) and the local password changing program to change
the user's password. The string describes a sequence of response-
receive pairs that smbd(8) uses to determine what to send to the
passwd program and what to expect back. If the expected output is
not received then the password is not changed.
This chat sequence is often quite site specific, depending on
what local methods are used for password control (such as NIS
etc).
Note that this parameter only is only used if the unix password
sync parameter is set to yes. This sequence is then called AS
ROOT when the SMB password in the smbpasswd file is being
changed, without access to the old password cleartext. This means
that root must be able to reset the user's password without know-
ing the text of the previous password. In the presence of NIS/YP,
this means that the passwd program must be executed on the NIS
master.
The string can contain the macro %n which is substituted for the
new password. The chat sequence can also contain the standard
macros \n, \r, \t and \s to give line-feed, carriage-return, tab
and space. The chat sequence string can also contain a '*' which
matches any sequence of characters. Double quotes can be used to
collect strings with spaces in them into a single string.
If the send string in any part of the chat sequence is a full
stop ".", then no string is sent. Similarly, if the expect string
is a full stop then no string is expected.
If the pam password change parameter is set to yes, the chat
pairs may be matched in any order, and success is determined by
the PAM result, not any particular output. The \n macro is
ignored for PAM conversions.
Default: passwd chat = *new*password* %n\n*new*password* %n\n
*changed*
Example: passwd chat = "*Enter OLD password*" %o\n "*Enter NEW
password*" %n\n "*Reenter NEW password*" %n\n "*Password
changed*"
passwd chat debug (G)
This boolean specifies if the passwd chat script parameter is run
in debug mode. In this mode the strings passed to and received
from the passwd chat are printed in the smbd(8) log with a debug
level of 100. This is a dangerous option as it will allow plain-
text passwords to be seen in the smbd log. It is available to
help Samba admins debug their passwd chat scripts when calling
the passwd program and should be turned off after this has been
done. This option has no effect if the pam password change
paramter is set. This parameter is off by default.
Default: passwd chat debug = no
passwd chat timeout (G)
This integer specifies the number of seconds smbd will wait for
an initial answer from a passwd chat script being run. Once the
initial answer is received the subsequent answers must be
received in one tenth of this time. The default it two seconds.
Default: passwd chat timeout = 2
passwd program (G)
The name of a program that can be used to set UNIX user pass-
words. Any occurrences of %u will be replaced with the user name.
The user name is checked for existence before calling the pass-
word changing program.
Also note that many passwd programs insist in reasonable pass-
words, such as a minimum length, or the inclusion of mixed case
chars and digits. This can pose a problem as some clients (such
as Windows for Workgroups) uppercase the password before sending
it.
Note that if the unix password sync parameter is set to yes then
this program is called AS ROOT before the SMB password in the
smbpasswd file is changed. If this UNIX password change fails,
then smbd will fail to change the SMB password also (this is by
design).
If the unix password sync parameter is set this parameter MUST
USE ABSOLUTE PATHS for ALL programs called, and must be examined
for security implications. Note that by default unix password
sync is set to no.
Default: passwd program =
Example: passwd program = /bin/passwd %u
password level (G)
Some client/server combinations have difficulty with mixed-case
passwords. One offending client is Windows for Workgroups, which
for some reason forces passwords to upper case when using the
LANMAN1 protocol, but leaves them alone when using COREPLUS!
Another problem child is the Windows 95/98 family of operating
systems. These clients upper case clear text passwords even when
NT LM 0.12 selected by the protocol negotiation request/response.
This parameter defines the maximum number of characters that may
be upper case in passwords.
For example, say the password given was "FRED". If
password level is set to 1, the following combinations would be
tried if "FRED" failed:
"Fred", "fred", "fRed", "frEd","freD"
If password level was set to 2, the following combinations would
also be tried:
"FRed", "FrEd", "FreD", "fREd", "fReD", "frED", ..
And so on.
The higher value this parameter is set to the more likely it is
that a mixed case password will be matched against a single case
password. However, you should be aware that use of this parameter
reduces security and increases the time taken to process a new
connection.
A value of zero will cause only two attempts to be made - the
password as is and the password in all-lower case.
This parameter is used only when using plain-text passwords. It
is not at all used when encrypted passwords as in use (that is
the default since samba-3.0.0). Use this only when encrypt pass-
words = No.
Default: password level = 0
Example: password level = 4
password server (G)
By specifying the name of another SMB server or Active Directory
domain controller with this option, and using security =
[ads|domain|server] it is possible to get Samba to to do all its
username/password validation using a specific remote server.
This option sets the name or IP address of the password server to
use. New syntax has been added to support defining the port to
use when connecting to the server the case of an ADS realm. To
define a port other than the default LDAP port of 389, add the
port number using a colon after the name or IP address (e.g.
192.168.1.100:389). If you do not specify a port, Samba will use
the standard LDAP port of tcp/389. Note that port numbers have no
effect on password servers for Windows NT 4.0 domains or netbios
connections.
If parameter is a name, it is looked up using the parameter name
resolve order and so may resolved by any method and order
described in that parameter.
The password server must be a machine capable of using the
"LM1.2X002" or the "NT LM 0.12" protocol, and it must be in user
level security mode.
Note
Using a password server means your UNIX box (running Samba) is
only as secure as your password server. DO NOT CHOOSE A PASSWORD
SERVER THAT YOU DON'T COMPLETELY TRUST. Never point a Samba
server at itself for password serving. This will cause a loop and
could lock up your Samba server!
The name of the password server takes the standard substitutions,
but probably the only useful one is %m , which means the Samba
server will use the incoming client as the password server. If
you use this then you better trust your clients, and you had bet-
ter restrict them with hosts allow!
If the security parameter is set to domain or ads, then the list
of machines in this option must be a list of Primary or Backup
Domain controllers for the Domain or the character '*', as the
Samba server is effectively in that domain, and will use crypto-
graphically authenticated RPC calls to authenticate the user log-
ging on. The advantage of using security = domain is that if you
list several hosts in the password server option then smbd will
try each in turn till it finds one that responds. This is useful
in case your primary server goes down.
If the password server option is set to the character '*', then
Samba will attempt to auto-locate the Primary or Backup Domain
controllers to authenticate against by doing a query for the name
WORKGROUP<1C> and then contacting each server returned in the
list of IP addresses from the name resolution source.
If the list of servers contains both names/IP's and the '*' char-
acter, the list is treated as a list of preferred domain con-
trollers, but an auto lookup of all remaining DC's will be added
to the list as well. Samba will not attempt to optimize this list
by locating the closest DC.
If the security parameter is set to server, then there are dif-
ferent restrictions that security = domain doesn't suffer from:
o You may list several password servers in the password
server parameter, however if an smbd makes a connection to
a password server, and then the password server fails, no
more users will be able to be authenticated from this smbd.
This is a restriction of the SMB/CIFS protocol when in
security = server mode and cannot be fixed in Samba.
o If you are using a Windows NT server as your password
server then you will have to ensure that your users are
able to login from the Samba server, as when in security =
server mode the network logon will appear to come from
there rather than from the users workstation.
Default: password server =
Example: password server = NT-PDC, NT-BDC1, NT-BDC2, *
Example: password server = windc.mydomain.com:389
192.168.1.101 *
Example: password server = *
directory
This parameter is a synonym for path.
path (S)
This parameter specifies a directory to which the user of the
service is to be given access. In the case of printable services,
this is where print data will spool prior to being submitted to
the host for printing.
For a printable service offering guest access, the service should
be readonly and the path should be world-writeable and have the
sticky bit set. This is not mandatory of course, but you probably
won't get the results you expect if you do otherwise.
Any occurrences of %u in the path will be replaced with the UNIX
username that the client is using on this connection. Any occur-
rences of %m will be replaced by the NetBIOS name of the machine
they are connecting from. These replacements are very useful for
setting up pseudo home directories for users.
Note that this path will be based on root dir if one was speci-
fied.
Default: path =
Example: path = /home/fred
pid directory (G)
This option specifies the directory where pid files will be
placed.
Default: pid directory = ${prefix}/var/locks
Example: pid directory = pid directory = /var/run/
posix locking (S)
The smbd(8) daemon maintains an database of file locks obtained
by SMB clients. The default behavior is to map this internal
database to POSIX locks. This means that file locks obtained by
SMB clients are consistent with those seen by POSIX compliant
applications accessing the files via a non-SMB method (e.g. NFS
or local file access). You should never need to disable this
parameter.
Default: posix locking = yes
postexec (S)
This option specifies a command to be run whenever the service is
disconnected. It takes the usual substitutions. The command may
be run as the root on some systems.
An interesting example may be to unmount server resources:
postexec = /etc/umount /cdrom
Default: postexec =
Example: postexec = echo \"%u disconnected from %S from %m (%I)\"
>> /tmp/log
exec
This parameter is a synonym for preexec.
preexec (S)
This option specifies a command to be run whenever the service is
connected to. It takes the usual substitutions.
An interesting example is to send the users a welcome message
every time they log in. Maybe a message of the day? Here is an
example:
preexec = csh -c 'echo \"Welcome to %S!\" |
/usr/local/samba/bin/smbclient -M %m -I %I' &
Of course, this could get annoying after a while :-)
See also preexec close and postexec.
Default: preexec =
Example: preexec = echo \"%u connected to %S from %m (%I)\" >>
/tmp/log
preexec close (S)
This boolean option controls whether a non-zero return code from
preexec should close the service being connected to.
Default: preexec close = no
prefered master
This parameter is a synonym for preferred master.
preferred master (G)
This boolean parameter controls if nmbd(8) is a preferred master
browser for its workgroup.
If this is set to yes, on startup, nmbd will force an election,
and it will have a slight advantage in winning the election. It
is recommended that this parameter is used in conjunction with
domain master = yes, so that nmbd can guarantee becoming a domain
master.
Use this option with caution, because if there are several hosts
(whether Samba servers, Windows 95 or NT) that are preferred mas-
ter browsers on the same subnet, they will each periodically and
continuously attempt to become the local master browser. This
will result in unnecessary broadcast traffic and reduced browsing
capabilities.
Default: preferred master = auto
auto services
This parameter is a synonym for preload.
preload (G)
This is a list of services that you want to be automatically
added to the browse lists. This is most useful for homes and
printers services that would otherwise not be visible.
Note that if you just want all printers in your printcap file
loaded then the load printers option is easier.
Default: preload =
Example: preload = fred lp colorlp
preload modules (G)
This is a list of paths to modules that should be loaded into
smbd before a client connects. This improves the speed of smbd
when reacting to new connections somewhat.
Default: preload modules =
Example: preload modules = /usr/lib/samba/passdb/mysql.so
preserve case (S)
This controls if new filenames are created with the case that the
client passes, or if they are forced to be the default case.
See the section on NAME MANGLING for a fuller discussion.
Default: preserve case = yes
print ok
This parameter is a synonym for printable.
printable (S)
If this parameter is yes, then clients may open, write to and
submit spool files on the directory specified for the service.
Note that a printable service will ALWAYS allow writing to the
service path (user privileges permitting) via the spooling of
print data. The read only parameter controls only non-printing
access to the resource.
Default: printable = no
printcap cache time (G)
This option specifies the number of seconds before the printing
subsystem is again asked for the known printers. If the value is
greater than 60 the initial waiting time is set to 60 seconds to
allow an earlier first rescan of the printing subsystem.
Setting this parameter to 0 disables any rescanning for new or
removed printers after the initial startup.
Default: printcap cache time = 750
Example: printcap cache time = 600
printcap
This parameter is a synonym for printcap name.
printcap name (S)
This parameter may be used to override the compiled-in default
printcap name used by the server (usually
/etc/printcap). See the discussion of the [printers] section
above for reasons why you might want to do this.
To use the CUPS printing interface set printcap name = cups. This
should be supplemented by an addtional setting printing = cups in
the [global] section. printcap name = cups will use the "dummy"
printcap created by CUPS, as specified in your CUPS configuration
file.
On System V systems that use lpstat to list available printers
you can use printcap name = lpstat to automatically obtain lists
of available printers. This is the default for systems that
define SYSV at configure time in Samba (this includes most System
V based systems). If
printcap name is set to lpstat on these systems then Samba will
launch lpstat -v and attempt to parse the output to obtain a
printer list.
A minimal printcap file would look something like this:
print1|My Printer 1
print2|My Printer 2
print3|My Printer 3
print4|My Printer 4
print5|My Printer 5
where the '|' separates aliases of a printer. The fact that the
second alias has a space in it gives a hint to Samba that it's a
comment.
Note
Under AIX the default printcap name is /etc/qconfig. Samba will
assume the file is in AIX qconfig format if the string qconfig
appears in the printcap filename. Default: printcap name =
/etc/printcap
Example: printcap name = /etc/myprintcap
print command (S)
After a print job has finished spooling to a service, this com-
mand will be used via a system() call to process the spool file.
Typically the command specified will submit the spool file to the
host's printing subsystem, but there is no requirement that this
be the case. The server will not remove the spool file, so what-
ever command you specify should remove the spool file when it has
been processed, otherwise you will need to manually remove old
spool files.
The print command is simply a text string. It will be used verba-
tim after macro substitutions have been made:
%s, %f - the path to the spool file name
%p - the appropriate printer name
%J - the job name as transmitted by the client.
%c - The number of printed pages of the spooled job (if known).
%z - the size of the spooled print job (in bytes)
The print command MUST contain at least one occurrence of %s or
%f - the %p is optional. At the time a job is submitted, if no
printer name is supplied the %p will be silently removed from the
printer command.
If specified in the [global] section, the print command given
will be used for any printable service that does not have its own
print command specified.
If there is neither a specified print command for a printable
service nor a global print command, spool files will be created
but not processed and (most importantly) not removed.
Note that printing may fail on some UNIXes from the nobody
account. If this happens then create an alternative guest account
that can print and set the guest account in the [global] section.
You can form quite complex print commands by realizing that they
are just passed to a shell. For example the following will log a
print job, print the file, then remove it. Note that ';' is the
usual separator for command in shell scripts.
print command = echo Printing %s >> /tmp/print.log; lpr -P %p %s;
rm %s
You may have to vary this command considerably depending on how
you normally print files on your system. The default for the
parameter varies depending on the setting of the printing parame-
ter.
Default: For printing = BSD, AIX, QNX, LPRNG or PLP :
print command = lpr -r -P%p %s
For printing = SYSV or HPUX :
print command = lp -c -d%p %s; rm %s
For printing = SOFTQ :
print command = lp -d%p -s %s; rm %s
For printing = CUPS : If SAMBA is compiled against libcups, then
printcap = cups uses the CUPS API to submit jobs, etc. Otherwise
it maps to the System V commands with the -oraw option for print-
ing, i.e. it uses lp -c -d%p -oraw; rm %s. With printing = cups,
and if SAMBA is compiled against libcups, any manually set print
command will be ignored.
No default
Example: print command = /usr/local/samba/bin/myprintscript %p %s
printer admin (S)
This lists users who can do anything to printers via the remote
administration interfaces offered by MS-RPC (usually using a NT
workstation). This parameter can be set per-share or globally.
Note: The root user always has admin rights. Use caution with use
in the global stanza as this can cause side effects.
This parameter has been marked deprecated in favor of using the
SePrintOperatorPrivilege and individual print security descrip-
tors. It will be removed in a future release.
Default: printer admin =
Example: printer admin = admin, @staff
printer
This parameter is a synonym for printer name.
printer name (S)
This parameter specifies the name of the printer to which print
jobs spooled through a printable service will be sent.
If specified in the [global] section, the printer name given will
be used for any printable service that does not have its own
printer name specified.
The default value of the printer name may be lp on many systems.
Default: printer name = none
Example: printer name = laserwriter
printing (S)
This parameters controls how printer status information is inter-
preted on your system. It also affects the default values for the
print command, lpq command, lppause command , lpresume command,
and lprm command if specified in the [global] section.
Currently nine printing styles are supported. They are BSD, AIX,
LPRNG, PLP, SYSV, HPUX, QNX, SOFTQ, and CUPS.
To see what the defaults are for the other print commands when
using the various options use the testparm(1) program.
This option can be set on a per printer basis. Please be aware
however, that you must place any of the various printing commands
(e.g. print command, lpq command, etc...) after defining the
value for the printing option since it will reset the printing
commands to default values.
See also the discussion in the [printers] section.
No default
printjob username (S)
This parameter specifies which user information will be passed to
the printing system. Usually, the username is sent, but in some
cases, e.g. the domain prefix is useful, too.
Default: printjob username = %U
Example: printjob username = %D\%U
private dir (G)
This parameters defines the directory smbd will use for storing
such files as smbpasswd and secrets.tdb.
Default: private dir = ${prefix}/private
profile acls (S)
This boolean parameter was added to fix the problems that people
have been having with storing user profiles on Samba shares from
Windows 2000 or Windows XP clients. New versions of Windows 2000
or Windows XP service packs do security ACL checking on the owner
and ability to write of the profile directory stored on a local
workstation when copied from a Samba share.
When not in domain mode with winbindd then the security info
copied onto the local workstation has no meaning to the logged in
user (SID) on that workstation so the profile storing fails.
Adding this parameter onto a share used for profile storage
changes two things about the returned Windows ACL. Firstly it
changes the owner and group owner of all reported files and
directories to be BUILTIN\Administrators, BUILTIN\Users respec-
tively (SIDs S-1-5-32-544, S-1-5-32-545). Secondly it adds an ACE
entry of "Full Control" to the SID BUILTIN\Users to every
returned ACL. This will allow any Windows 2000 or XP workstation
user to access the profile.
Note that if you have multiple users logging on to a workstation
then in order to prevent them from being able to access each oth-
ers profiles you must remove the "Bypass traverse checking"
advanced user right. This will prevent access to other users pro-
file directories as the top level profile directory (named after
the user) is created by the workstation profile code and has an
ACL restricting entry to the directory tree to the owning user.
Default: profile acls = no
queuepause command (S)
This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server
host in order to pause the printer queue.
This command should be a program or script which takes a printer
name as its only parameter and stops the printer queue, such that
no longer jobs are submitted to the printer.
This command is not supported by Windows for Workgroups, but can
be issued from the Printers window under Windows 95 and NT.
If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. Oth-
erwise it is placed at the end of the command.
Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the
command as the PATH may not be available to the server.
No default
Example: queuepause command = disable %p
queueresume command (S)
This parameter specifies the command to be executed on the server
host in order to resume the printer queue. It is the command to
undo the behavior that is caused by the previous parameter
(queuepause command).
This command should be a program or script which takes a printer
name as its only parameter and resumes the printer queue, such
that queued jobs are resubmitted to the printer.
This command is not supported by Windows for Workgroups, but can
be issued from the Printers window under Windows 95 and NT.
If a %p is given then the printer name is put in its place. Oth-
erwise it is placed at the end of the command.
Note that it is good practice to include the absolute path in the
command as the PATH may not be available to the server.
Default: queueresume command =
Example: queueresume command = enable %p
read bmpx (G)
This boolean parameter controls whether smbd(8) will support the
"Read Block Multiplex" SMB. This is now rarely used and defaults
to no. You should never need to set this parameter.
Default: read bmpx = no
read list (S)
This is a list of users that are given read-only access to a ser-
vice. If the connecting user is in this list then they will not
be given write access, no matter what the read only option is set
to. The list can include group names using the syntax described
in the invalid users parameter.
This parameter will not work with the security = share in Samba
3.0. This is by design.
Default: read list =
Example: read list = mary, @students
read only (S)
An inverted synonym is writeable.
If this parameter is yes, then users of a service may not create
or modify files in the service's directory.
Note that a printable service (printable = yes) will ALWAYS allow
writing to the directory (user privileges permitting), but only
via spooling operations.
Default: read only = yes
read raw (G)
This parameter controls whether or not the server will support
the raw read SMB requests when transferring data to clients.
If enabled, raw reads allow reads of 65535 bytes in one packet.
This typically provides a major performance benefit.
However, some clients either negotiate the allowable block size
incorrectly or are incapable of supporting larger block sizes,
and for these clients you may need to disable raw reads.
In general this parameter should be viewed as a system tuning
tool and left severely alone.
Default: read raw = yes
realm (G)
This option specifies the kerberos realm to use. The realm is
used as the ADS equivalent of the NT4 domain. It is usually set
to the DNS name of the kerberos server.
Default: realm =
Example: realm = mysambabox.mycompany.com
remote announce (G)
This option allows you to setup nmbd(8)to periodically announce
itself to arbitrary IP addresses with an arbitrary workgroup
name.
This is useful if you want your Samba server to appear in a
remote workgroup for which the normal browse propagation rules
don't work. The remote workgroup can be anywhere that you can
send IP packets to.
For example:
remote announce = 192.168.2.255/SERVERS 192.168.4.255/STAFF
the above line would cause nmbd to announce itself to the two
given IP addresses using the given workgroup names. If you leave
out the workgroup name then the one given in the workgroup param-
eter is used instead.
The IP addresses you choose would normally be the broadcast
addresses of the remote networks, but can also be the IP
addresses of known browse masters if your network config is that
stable.
See the chapter on Network Browsing in the Samba-HOWTO book.
Default: remote announce =
remote browse sync (G)
This option allows you to setup nmbd(8) to periodically request
synchronization of browse lists with the master browser of a
Samba server that is on a remote segment. This option will allow
you to gain browse lists for multiple workgroups across routed
networks. This is done in a manner that does not work with any
non-Samba servers.
This is useful if you want your Samba server and all local
clients to appear in a remote workgroup for which the normal
browse propagation rules don't work. The remote workgroup can be
anywhere that you can send IP packets to.
For example:
remote browse sync = 192.168.2.255 192.168.4.255
the above line would cause nmbd to request the master browser on
the specified subnets or addresses to synchronize their browse
lists with the local server.
The IP addresses you choose would normally be the broadcast
addresses of the remote networks, but can also be the IP
addresses of known browse masters if your network config is that
stable. If a machine IP address is given Samba makes NO attempt
to validate that the remote machine is available, is listening,
nor that it is in fact the browse master on its segment.
The remote browse sync may be used on networks where there is no
WINS server, and may be used on disjoint networks where each net-
work has its own WINS server.
Default: remote browse sync =
rename user script (G)
This is the full pathname to a script that will be run as root by
smbd(8) under special circumstances described below.
When a user with admin authority or SeAddUserPrivilege rights
renames a user (e.g.: from the NT4 User Manager for Domains),
this script will be run to rename the POSIX user. Two variables,
%uold and %unew, will be substituted with the old and new user-
names, respectively. The script should return 0 upon successful
completion, and nonzero otherwise.
Note
The script has all responsibility to rename all the necessary
data that is accessible in this posix method. This can mean dif-
ferent requirements for different backends. The tdbsam and smb-
passwd backends will take care of the contents of their respec-
tive files, so the script is responsible only for changing the
POSIX username, and other data that may required for your circum-
stances, such as home directory. Please also consider whether or
not you need to rename the actual home directories themselves.
The ldapsam backend will not make any changes, because of the
potential issues with renaming the LDAP naming attribute. In this
case the script is responsible for changing the attribute that
samba uses (uid) for locating users, as well as any data that
needs to change for other applications using the same directory.
Default: rename user script = no
reset on zero vc (G)
This boolean option controls whether an incoming session setup
should kill other connections coming from the same IP. This
matches the default Windows 2003 behaviour. Setting this parame-
ter to yes becomes necessary when you have a flaky network and
windows decides to reconnect while the old connection still has
files with share modes open. These files become inaccessible over
the new connection. The client sends a zero VC on the new connec-
tion, and Windows 2003 kills all other connections coming from
the same IP. This way the locked files are accessible again.
Please be aware that enabling this option will kill connections
behind a masquerading router.
Default: reset on zero vc = no
restrict anonymous (G)
The setting of this parameter determines whether user and group
list information is returned for an anonymous connection. and
mirrors the effects of the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Control\LSA\RestrictAnonymous
registry key in Windows 2000 and Windows NT. When set to 0, user
and group list information is returned to anyone who asks. When
set to 1, only an authenticated user can retrive user and group
list information. For the value 2, supported by Windows 2000/XP
and Samba, no anonymous connections are allowed at all. This can
break third party and Microsoft applications which expect to be
allowed to perform operations anonymously.
The security advantage of using restrict anonymous = 1 is dubi-
ous, as user and group list information can be obtained using
other means.
Note
The security advantage of using restrict anonymous = 2 is removed
by setting guest ok = yes on any share. Default: restrict anony-
mous = 0
root
This parameter is a synonym for root directory.
root dir
This parameter is a synonym for root directory.
root directory (G)
The server will chroot() (i.e. Change its root directory) to this
directory on startup. This is not strictly necessary for secure
operation. Even without it the server will deny access to files
not in one of the service entries. It may also check for, and
deny access to, soft links to other parts of the filesystem, or
attempts to use ".." in file names to access other directories
(depending on the setting of the wide smbconfoptions parameter).
Adding a root directory entry other than "/" adds an extra level
of security, but at a price. It absolutely ensures that no access
is given to files not in the sub-tree specified in the root
directory option, including some files needed for complete opera-
tion of the server. To maintain full operability of the server
you will need to mirror some system files into the root directory
tree. In particular you will need to mirror /etc/passwd (or a
subset of it), and any binaries or configuration files needed for
printing (if required). The set of files that must be mirrored is
operating system dependent.
Default: root directory = /
Example: root directory = /homes/smb
root postexec (S)
This is the same as the postexec parameter except that the com-
mand is run as root. This is useful for unmounting filesystems
(such as CDROMs) after a connection is closed.
Default: root postexec =
root preexec (S)
This is the same as the preexec parameter except that the command
is run as root. This is useful for mounting filesystems (such as
CDROMs) when a connection is opened.
Default: root preexec =
root preexec close (S)
This is the same as the preexec close parameter except that the
command is run as root.
Default: root preexec close = no
security (G)
This option affects how clients respond to Samba and is one of
the most important settings in the
smb.conf file.
The option sets the "security mode bit" in replies to protocol
negotiations with smbd(8) to turn share level security on or off.
Clients decide based on this bit whether (and how) to transfer
user and password information to the server.
The default is security = user, as this is the most common set-
ting needed when talking to Windows 98 and Windows NT.
The alternatives are security = share, security = server or secu-
rity = domain.
In versions of Samba prior to 2.0.0, the default was security =
share mainly because that was the only option at one stage.
There is a bug in WfWg that has relevance to this setting. When
in user or server level security a WfWg client will totally
ignore the username and password you type in the "connect drive"
dialog box. This makes it very difficult (if not impossible) to
connect to a Samba service as anyone except the user that you are
logged into WfWg as.
If your PCs use usernames that are the same as their usernames on
the UNIX machine then you will want to use security = user. If
you mostly use usernames that don't exist on the UNIX box then
use security = share.
You should also use security = share if you want to mainly setup
shares without a password (guest shares). This is commonly used
for a shared printer server. It is more difficult to setup guest
shares with security = user, see the map to guestparameter for
details.
It is possible to use smbd in a
hybrid mode where it is offers both user and share level secu-
rity under different NetBIOS aliases.
The different settings will now be explained.
SECURITY = SHARE
When clients connect to a share level security server they need
not log onto the server with a valid username and password before
attempting to connect to a shared resource (although modern
clients such as Windows 95/98 and Windows NT will send a logon
request with a username but no password when talking to a secu-
rity = share server). Instead, the clients send authentication
information (passwords) on a per-share basis, at the time they
attempt to connect to that share.
Note that smbd ALWAYS uses a valid UNIX user to act on behalf of
the client, even in security = share level security.
As clients are not required to send a username to the server in
share level security, smbd uses several techniques to determine
the correct UNIX user to use on behalf of the client.
A list of possible UNIX usernames to match with the given client
password is constructed using the following methods :
o If the guest only parameter is set, then all the other
stages are missed and only the guest account username is
checked.
o Is a username is sent with the share connection request,
then this username (after mapping - see username map), is
added as a potential username.
o If the client did a previous logon request (the Session-
Setup SMB call) then the username sent in this SMB will be
added as a potential username.
o The name of the service the client requested is added as a
potential username.
o The NetBIOS name of the client is added to the list as a
potential username.
o Any users on the user list are added as potential user-
names.
If the guest only parameter is not set, then this list is then
tried with the supplied password. The first user for whom the
password matches will be used as the UNIX user.
If the guest only parameter is set, or no username can be
determined then if the share is marked as available to the
guest account, then this guest user will be used, otherwise
access is denied.
Note that it can be very confusing in share-level security as
to which UNIX username will eventually be used in granting
access.
See also the section NOTE ABOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION.
SECURITY = USER
This is the default security setting in Samba 3.0. With user-
level security a client must first "log-on" with a valid user-
name and password (which can be mapped using the username map
parameter). Encrypted passwords (see the encrypted passwords
parameter) can also be used in this security mode. Parameters
such as user and guest only if set are then applied and may
change the UNIX user to use on this connection, but only after
the user has been successfully authenticated.
Note that the name of the resource being requested is not sent
to the server until after the server has successfully authen-
ticated the client. This is why guest shares don't work in
user level security without allowing the server to automati-
cally map unknown users into the guest account. See the map to
guest parameter for details on doing this.
See also the section NOTE ABOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION.
SECURITY = DOMAIN
This mode will only work correctly if net(8) has been used to
add this machine into a Windows NT Domain. It expects the
encrypted passwords parameter to be set to yes. In this mode
Samba will try to validate the username/password by passing it
to a Windows NT Primary or Backup Domain Controller, in
exactly the same way that a Windows NT Server would do.
Note that a valid UNIX user must still exist as well as the
account on the Domain Controller to allow Samba to have a
valid UNIX account to map file access to.
Note that from the client's point of view security = domain is
the same as security = user. It only affects how the server
deals with the authentication, it does not in any way affect
what the client sees.
Note that the name of the resource being requested is not sent
to the server until after the server has successfully authen-
ticated the client. This is why guest shares don't work in
user level security without allowing the server to automati-
cally map unknown users into the guest account. See the map to
guest parameter for details on doing this.
See also the section NOTE ABOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION.
See also the password server parameter and the encrypted pass-
words parameter.
SECURITY = SERVER
In this mode Samba will try to validate the username/password
by passing it to another SMB server, such as an NT box. If
this fails it will revert to security = user. It expects the
encrypted passwords parameter to be set to yes, unless the
remote server does not support them. However note that if
encrypted passwords have been negotiated then Samba cannot
revert back to checking the UNIX password file, it must have a
valid smbpasswd file to check users against. See the chapter
about the User Database in the Samba HOWTO Collection for
details on how to set this up.
Note
This mode of operation has significant pitfalls since it is
more vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and server imper-
sonation. In particular, this mode of operation can cause sig-
nificant resource consuption on the PDC, as it must maintain
an active connection for the duration of the user's session.
Furthermore, if this connection is lost, there is no way to
reestablish it, and futher authentications to the Samba server
may fail (from a single client, till it disconnects).
Note
From the client's point of view security = server is the same
as security = user. It only affects how the server deals with
the authentication, it does not in any way affect what the
client sees. Note that the name of the resource being
requested is not sent to the server until after the server has
successfully authenticated the client. This is why guest
shares don't work in user level security without allowing the
server to automatically map unknown users into the guest
account. See the map to guest parameter for details on doing
this.
See also the section NOTE ABOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION.
See also the password server parameter and the encrypted pass-
words parameter.
SECURITY = ADS
In this mode, Samba will act as a domain member in an ADS
realm. To operate in this mode, the machine running Samba will
need to have Kerberos installed and configured and Samba will
need to be joined to the ADS realm using the net utility.
Note that this mode does NOT make Samba operate as a Active
Directory Domain Controller.
Read the chapter about Domain Membership in the HOWTO for
details.
Default: security = USER
Example: security = DOMAIN
security mask (S)
This parameter controls what UNIX permission bits can be modified
when a Windows NT client is manipulating the UNIX permission on a
file using the native NT security dialog box.
This parameter is applied as a mask (AND'ed with) to the changed
permission bits, thus preventing any bits not in this mask from
being modified. Make sure not to mix up this parameter with force
security mode, which works in a manner similar to this one but
uses a logical OR instead of an AND.
Essentially, zero bits in this mask may be treated as a set of
bits the user is not allowed to change.
If not set explicitly this parameter is 0777, allowing a user to
modify all the user/group/world permissions on a file.
Note that users who can access the Samba server through other
means can easily bypass this restriction, so it is primarily use-
ful for standalone "appliance" systems. Administrators of most
normal systems will probably want to leave it set to 0777.
Default: security mask = 0777
Example: security mask = 0770
server schannel (G)
This controls whether the server offers or even demands the use
of the netlogon schannel. server schannel = no does not offer
the schannel, server schannel = auto offers the schannel but does
not enforce it, and server schannel = yes denies access if the
client is not able to speak netlogon schannel. This is only the
case for Windows NT4 before SP4.
Please note that with this set to no you will have to apply the
WindowsXP WinXP_SignOrSeal.reg registry patch found in the
docs/registry subdirectory of the Samba distribution tarball.
Default: server schannel = auto
Example: server schannel = yes
server signing (G)
This controls whether the server offers or requires the client it
talks to to use SMB signing. Possible values are auto, mandatory
and disabled.
When set to auto, SMB signing is offered, but not enforced. When
set to mandatory, SMB signing is required and if set to disabled,
SMB signing is not offered either.
Default: server signing = Disabled
server string (G)
This controls what string will show up in the printer comment box
in print manager and next to the IPC connection in net view. It
can be any string that you wish to show to your users.
It also sets what will appear in browse lists next to the machine
name.
A %v will be replaced with the Samba version number.
A %h will be replaced with the hostname.
Default: server string = Samba %v
Example: server string = University of GNUs Samba Server
set directory (S)
If set directory = no, then users of the service may not use the
setdir command to change directory.
The setdir command is only implemented in the Digital Pathworks
client. See the Pathworks documentation for details.
Default: set directory = no
set primary group script (G)
Thanks to the Posix subsystem in NT a Windows User has a primary
group in addition to the auxiliary groups. This script sets the
primary group in the unix userdatase when an administrator sets
the primary group from the windows user manager or when fetching
a SAM with net rpc vampire. %u will be replaced with the user
whose primary group is to be set. %g will be replaced with the
group to set.
Default: set primary group script =
Example: set primary group script = /usr/sbin/usermod -g '%g'
'%u'
set quota command (G)
The set quota command should only be used whenever there is no
operating system API available from the OS that samba can use.
This option is only available if Samba was configured with the
argument --with-sys-quotas or on linux when was used and a work-
ing quota api was found in the system. Most packages are config-
ured with these options already.
This parameter should specify the path to a script that can set
quota for the specified arguments.
The specified script should take the following arguments:
o 1 - quota type
o 1 - user quotas
o 2 - user default quotas (uid = -1)
o 3 - group quotas
o 4 - group default quotas (gid = -1)
o 2 - id (uid for user, gid for group, -1 if N/A)
o 3 - quota state (0 = disable, 1 = enable, 2 = enable and
enforce)
o 4 - block softlimit
o 5 - block hardlimit
o 6 - inode softlimit
o 7 - inode hardlimit
o 8(optional) - block size, defaults to 1024
The script should output at least one line of data on success.
And nothing on failure.
Default: set quota command =
Example: set quota command = /usr/local/sbin/set_quota
share modes (S)
This enables or disables the honoring of the share modes during a
file open. These modes are used by clients to gain exclusive read
or write access to a file.
These open modes are not directly supported by UNIX, so they are
simulated using shared memory, or lock files if your UNIX doesn't
support shared memory (almost all do).
The share modes that are enabled by this option are DENY_DOS,
DENY_ALL, DENY_READ, DENY_WRITE, DENY_NONE and DENY_FCB.
This option gives full share compatibility and enabled by
default.
You should NEVER turn this parameter off as many Windows applica-
tions will break if you do so.
Default: share modes = yes
short preserve case (S)
This boolean parameter controls if new files which conform to 8.3
syntax, that is all in upper case and of suitable length, are
created upper case, or if they are forced to be the default case.
This option can be use with preserve case = yes to permit long
filenames to retain their case, while short names are lowered.
See the section on NAME MANGLING.
Default: short preserve case = yes
show add printer wizard (G)
With the introduction of MS-RPC based printing support for Win-
dows NT/2000 client in Samba 2.2, a "Printers..." folder will
appear on Samba hosts in the share listing. Normally this folder
will contain an icon for the MS Add Printer Wizard (APW). How-
ever, it is possible to disable this feature regardless of the
level of privilege of the connected user.
Under normal circumstances, the Windows NT/2000 client will open
a handle on the printer server with OpenPrinterEx() asking for
Administrator privileges. If the user does not have administra-
tive access on the print server (i.e is not root or a member of
the printer admin group), the OpenPrinterEx() call fails and the
client makes another open call with a request for a lower privi-
lege level. This should succeed, however the APW icon will not be
displayed.
Disabling the show add printer wizard parameter will always cause
the OpenPrinterEx() on the server to fail. Thus the APW icon will
never be displayed.
Note
This does not prevent the same user from having administrative
privilege on an individual printer. Default: show add printer
wizard = yes
shutdown script (G)
This a full path name to a script called by smbd(8) that should
start a shutdown procedure.
If the connected user posseses the SeRemoteShutdownPrivilege,
right, this command will be run as user.
The %z %t %r %f variables are expanded as follows:
o %z will be substituted with the shutdown message sent to
the server.
o %t will be substituted with the number of seconds to wait
before effectively starting the shutdown procedure.
o %r will be substituted with the switch -r. It means reboot
after shutdown for NT.
o %f will be substituted with the switch -f. It means force
the shutdown even if applications do not respond for NT.
Shutdown script example:
#!/bin/bash
$time=0
let "time/60"
let "time++"
/sbin/shutdown $3 $4 +$time $1 &
Shutdown does not return so we need to launch it in back-
ground.
Default: shutdown script =
Example: shutdown script = /usr/local/samba/sbin/shutdown %m
%t %r %f
smb passwd file (G)
This option sets the path to the encrypted smbpasswd file. By
default the path to the smbpasswd file is compiled into Samba.
An example of use is:
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
Default: smb passwd file = ${prefix}/private/smbpasswd
smb ports (G)
Specifies which ports the server should listen on for SMB traf-
fic.
Default: smb ports = 445 139
socket address (G)
This option allows you to control what address Samba will listen
for connections on. This is used to support multiple virtual
interfaces on the one server, each with a different configura-
tion.
By default Samba will accept connections on any address.
Default: socket address =
Example: socket address = 192.168.2.20
socket options (G)
This option allows you to set socket options to be used when
talking with the client.
Socket options are controls on the networking layer of the oper-
ating systems which allow the connection to be tuned.
This option will typically be used to tune your Samba server for
optimal performance for your local network. There is no way that
Samba can know what the optimal parameters are for your net, so
you must experiment and choose them yourself. We strongly suggest
you read the appropriate documentation for your operating system
first (perhaps man setsockopt will help).
You may find that on some systems Samba will say "Unknown socket
option" when you supply an option. This means you either incor-
rectly typed it or you need to add an include file to includes.h
for your OS. If the latter is the case please send the patch to
samba-technical@samba.org.
Any of the supported socket options may be combined in any way
you like, as long as your OS allows it.
This is the list of socket options currently settable using this
option:
o SO_KEEPALIVE
o SO_REUSEADDR
o SO_BROADCAST
o TCP_NODELAY
o IPTOS_LOWDELAY
o IPTOS_THROUGHPUT
o SO_SNDBUF *
o SO_RCVBUF *
o SO_SNDLOWAT *
o SO_RCVLOWAT *
Those marked with a '*' take an integer argument. The others
can optionally take a 1 or 0 argument to enable or disable the
option, by default they will be enabled if you don't specify 1
or 0.
To specify an argument use the syntax SOME_OPTION = VALUE for
example SO_SNDBUF = 8192. Note that you must not have any spa-
ces before or after the = sign.
If you are on a local network then a sensible option might be:
socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY
If you have a local network then you could try:
socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY
If you are on a wide area network then perhaps try setting
IPTOS_THROUGHPUT.
Note that several of the options may cause your Samba server
to fail completely. Use these options with caution!
Default: socket options = TCP_NODELAY
Example: socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY
stat cache (G)
This parameter determines if smbd(8) will use a cache in order to
speed up case insensitive name mappings. You should never need to
change this parameter.
Default: stat cache = yes
store dos attributes (S)
If this parameter is set Samba attempts to first read DOS
attributes (SYSTEM, HIDDEN, ARCHIVE or READ-ONLY) from a filesys-
tem extended attribute, before mapping DOS attributes to UNIX
permission bits (such as occurs with map hidden and map read-
only). When set, DOS attributes will be stored onto an extended
attribute in the UNIX filesystem, associated with the file or
directory. For no other mapping to occur as a fall-back, the
parameters map hidden, map system, map archive and map readonly
must be set to off. This parameter writes the DOS attributes as a
string into the extended attribute named "user.DOSATTRIB". This
extended attribute is explicitly hidden from smbd clients
requesting an EA list. On Linux the filesystem must have been
mounted with the mount option user_xattr in order for extended
attributes to work, also extended attributes must be compiled
into the Linux kernel.
Default: store dos attributes = no
strict allocate (S)
This is a boolean that controls the handling of disk space allo-
cation in the server. When this is set to yes the server will
change from UNIX behaviour of not committing real disk storage
blocks when a file is extended to the Windows behaviour of actu-
ally forcing the disk system to allocate real storage blocks when
a file is created or extended to be a given size. In UNIX termi-
nology this means that Samba will stop creating sparse files.
This can be slow on some systems.
When strict allocate is no the server does sparse disk block
allocation when a file is extended.
Setting this to yes can help Samba return out of quota messages
on systems that are restricting the disk quota of users.
Default: strict allocate = no
strict locking (S)
This is an enumerated type that controls the handling of file
locking in the server. When this is set to yes, the server will
check every read and write access for file locks, and deny access
if locks exist. This can be slow on some systems.
When strict locking is set to Auto (the default), the server per-
forms file lock checks only on non-oplocked files. As most Win-
dows redirectors perform file locking checks locally on oplocked
files this is a good trade off for inproved performance.
When strict locking is disabled, the server performs file lock
checks only when the client explicitly asks for them.
Well-behaved clients always ask for lock checks when it is impor-
tant. So in the vast majority of cases, strict locking = Auto or
strict locking = no is acceptable.
Default: strict locking = Auto
strict sync (S)
Many Windows applications (including the Windows 98 explorer
shell) seem to confuse flushing buffer contents to disk with
doing a sync to disk. Under UNIX, a sync call forces the process
to be suspended until the kernel has ensured that all outstanding
data in kernel disk buffers has been safely stored onto stable
storage. This is very slow and should only be done rarely. Set-
ting this parameter to no (the default) means that smbd(8)
ignores the Windows applications requests for a sync call. There
is only a possibility of losing data if the operating system
itself that Samba is running on crashes, so there is little dan-
ger in this default setting. In addition, this fixes many perfor-
mance problems that people have reported with the new Windows98
explorer shell file copies.
Default: strict sync = no
svcctl list (G)
This option defines a list of init scripts that smbd will use for
starting and stopping Unix services via the Win32 ServiceControl
API. This allows Windows administrators to utilize the MS Manage-
ment Console plug-ins to manage a Unix server running Samba.
The administrator must create a directory name svcctl in Samba's
$(libdir) and create symbolic links to the init scripts in
/etc/init.d/. The name of the links must match the names given as
part of the svcctl list.
Default: svcctl list =
Example: svcctl list = cups postfix portmap httpd
sync always (S)
This is a boolean parameter that controls whether writes will
always be written to stable storage before the write call
returns. If this is no then the server will be guided by the
client's request in each write call (clients can set a bit indi-
cating that a particular write should be synchronous). If this is
yes then every write will be followed by a fsync() call to ensure
the data is written to disk. Note that the strict sync parameter
must be set to yes in order for this parameter to have any
affect.
Default: sync always = no
syslog (G)
This parameter maps how Samba debug messages are logged onto the
system syslog logging levels. Samba debug level zero maps onto
syslog LOG_ERR, debug level one maps onto LOG_WARNING, debug
level two maps onto LOG_NOTICE, debug level three maps onto
LOG_INFO. All higher levels are mapped to LOG_DEBUG.
This parameter sets the threshold for sending messages to syslog.
Only messages with debug level less than this value will be sent
to syslog.
Default: syslog = 1
syslog only (G)
If this parameter is set then Samba debug messages are logged
into the system syslog only, and not to the debug log files.
Default: syslog only = no
template homedir (G)
When filling out the user information for a Windows NT user, the
winbindd(8) daemon uses this parameter to fill in the home direc-
tory for that user. If the string %D is present it is substituted
with the user's Windows NT domain name. If the string %U is
present it is substituted with the user's Windows NT user name.
Default: template homedir = /home/%D/%U
template shell (G)
When filling out the user information for a Windows NT user, the
winbindd(8) daemon uses this parameter to fill in the login shell
for that user.
No default
time offset (G)
This parameter is a setting in minutes to add to the normal GMT
to local time conversion. This is useful if you are serving a lot
of PCs that have incorrect daylight saving time handling.
Default: time offset = 0
Example: time offset = 60
time server (G)
This parameter determines if nmbd(8) advertises itself as a time
server to Windows clients.
Default: time server = no
unix charset (G)
Specifies the charset the unix machine Samba runs on uses. Samba
needs to know this in order to be able to convert text to the
charsets other SMB clients use.
This is also the charset Samba will use when specifying arguments
to scripts that it invokes.
Default: unix charset = UTF8
Example: unix charset = ASCII
unix extensions (G)
This boolean parameter controls whether Samba implments the CIFS
UNIX extensions, as defined by HP. These extensions enable Samba
to better serve UNIX CIFS clients by supporting features such as
symbolic links, hard links, etc... These extensions require a
similarly enabled client, and are of no current use to Windows
clients.
Default: unix extensions = yes
unix password sync (G)
This boolean parameter controls whether Samba attempts to syn-
chronize the UNIX password with the SMB password when the
encrypted SMB password in the smbpasswd file is changed. If this
is set to yes the program specified in the passwd programparame-
ter is called AS ROOT - to allow the new UNIX password to be set
without access to the old UNIX password (as the SMB password
change code has no access to the old password cleartext, only the
new).
Default: unix password sync = no
update encrypted (G)
This boolean parameter allows a user logging on with a plaintext
password to have their encrypted (hashed) password in the smb-
passwd file to be updated automatically as they log on. This
option allows a site to migrate from plaintext password authenti-
cation (users authenticate with plaintext password over the wire,
and are checked against a UNIX account atabase) to encrypted
password authentication (the SMB challenge/response authentica-
tion mechanism) without forcing all users to re-enter their pass-
words via smbpasswd at the time the change is made. This is a
convenience option to allow the change over to encrypted pass-
words to be made over a longer period. Once all users have
encrypted representations of their passwords in the smbpasswd
file this parameter should be set to no.
In order for this parameter to be operative the encrypt passwords
parameter must be set to no. The default value of encrypt pass-
words = Yes. Note: This must be set to no for this update
encrypted to work.
Note that even when this parameter is set a user authenticating
to smbd must still enter a valid password in order to connect
correctly, and to update their hashed (smbpasswd) passwords.
Default: update encrypted = no
use client driver (S)
This parameter applies only to Windows NT/2000 clients. It has no
effect on Windows 95/98/ME clients. When serving a printer to
Windows NT/2000 clients without first installing a valid printer
driver on the Samba host, the client will be required to install
a local printer driver. From this point on, the client will treat
the print as a local printer and not a network printer connec-
tion. This is much the same behavior that will occur when disable
spoolss = yes.
The differentiating factor is that under normal circumstances,
the NT/2000 client will attempt to open the network printer using
MS-RPC. The problem is that because the client considers the
printer to be local, it will attempt to issue the OpenPrinterEx()
call requesting access rights associated with the logged on user.
If the user possesses local administator rights but not root
privilege on the Samba host (often the case), the OpenPrinterEx()
call will fail. The result is that the client will now display an
"Access Denied; Unable to connect" message in the printer queue
window (even though jobs may successfully be printed).
If this parameter is enabled for a printer, then any attempt to
open the printer with the PRINTER_ACCESS_ADMINISTER right is
mapped to PRINTER_ACCESS_USE instead. Thus allowing the Open-
PrinterEx() call to succeed. This parameter MUST not be able
enabled on a print share which has valid print driver installed
on the Samba server.
Default: use client driver = no
use kerberos keytab (G)
Specifies whether Samba should attempt to maintain service prin-
cipals in the systems keytab file for host/FQDN and cifs/FQDN.
When you are using the heimdal Kerberos libraries, you must also
specify the following in /etc/krb5.conf:
[libdefaults]
default_keytab_name = FILE:/etc/krb5.keytab
Default: use kerberos keytab = False
use mmap (G)
This global parameter determines if the tdb internals of Samba
can depend on mmap working correctly on the running system. Samba
requires a coherent mmap/read-write system memory cache. Cur-
rently only HPUX does not have such a coherent cache, and so this
parameter is set to no by default on HPUX. On all other systems
this parameter should be left alone. This parameter is provided
to help the Samba developers track down problems with the tdb
internal code.
Default: use mmap = yes
user
This parameter is a synonym for username.
users
This parameter is a synonym for username.
username (S)
Multiple users may be specified in a comma-delimited list, in
which case the supplied password will be tested against each
username in turn (left to right).
The username line is needed only when the PC is unable to supply
its own username. This is the case for the COREPLUS protocol or
where your users have different WfWg usernames to UNIX usernames.
In both these cases you may also be better using the
\serverre%user syntax instead.
The username line is not a great solution in many cases as it
means Samba will try to validate the supplied password against
each of the usernames in the username line in turn. This is slow
and a bad idea for lots of users in case of duplicate passwords.
You may get timeouts or security breaches using this parameter
unwisely.
Samba relies on the underlying UNIX security. This parameter does
not restrict who can login, it just offers hints to the Samba
server as to what usernames might correspond to the supplied
password. Users can login as whoever they please and they will be
able to do no more damage than if they started a telnet session.
The daemon runs as the user that they log in as, so they cannot
do anything that user cannot do.
To restrict a service to a particular set of users you can use
the valid users parameter.
If any of the usernames begin with a '@' then the name will be
looked up first in the NIS netgroups list (if Samba is compiled
with netgroup support), followed by a lookup in the UNIX groups
database and will expand to a list of all users in the group of
that name.
If any of the usernames begin with a '+' then the name will be
looked up only in the UNIX groups database and will expand to a
list of all users in the group of that name.
If any of the usernames begin with a '&' then the name will be
looked up only in the NIS netgroups database (if Samba is com-
piled with netgroup support) and will expand to a list of all
users in the netgroup group of that name.
Note that searching though a groups database can take quite some
time, and some clients may time out during the search.
See the section NOTE ABOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION for more
information on how this parameter determines access to the ser-
vices.
Default: username = # The guest account if a guest service, else
<empty string>.
Example: username = fred, mary, jack, jane, @users, @pcgroup
username level (G)
This option helps Samba to try and 'guess' at the real UNIX user-
name, as many DOS clients send an all-uppercase username. By
default Samba tries all lowercase, followed by the username with
the first letter capitalized, and fails if the username is not
found on the UNIX machine.
If this parameter is set to non-zero the behavior changes. This
parameter is a number that specifies the number of uppercase com-
binations to try while trying to determine the UNIX user name.
The higher the number the more combinations will be tried, but
the slower the discovery of usernames will be. Use this parameter
when you have strange usernames on your UNIX machine, such as
AstrangeUser .
This parameter is needed only on UNIX systems that have case sen-
sitive usernames.
Default: username level = 0
Example: username level = 5
username map (G)
This option allows you to specify a file containing a mapping of
usernames from the clients to the server. This can be used for
several purposes. The most common is to map usernames that users
use on DOS or Windows machines to those that the UNIX box uses.
The other is to map multiple users to a single username so that
they can more easily share files.
Please note that for user or share mode security, the username
map is applied prior to validating the user credentials. Domain
member servers (domain or ads) apply the username map after the
user has been successfully authenticated by the domain controller
and require fully qualified enties in the map table (e.g. biddle
= DOMAINo).
The map file is parsed line by line. Each line should contain a
single UNIX username on the left then a '=' followed by a list of
usernames on the right. The list of usernames on the right may
contain names of the form @group in which case they will match
any UNIX username in that group. The special client name '*' is a
wildcard and matches any name. Each line of the map file may be
up to 1023 characters long.
The file is processed on each line by taking the supplied user-
name and comparing it with each username on the right hand side
of the '=' signs. If the supplied name matches any of the names
on the right hand side then it is replaced with the name on the
left. Processing then continues with the next line.
If any line begins with a '#' or a ';' then it is ignored.
If any line begins with an '!' then the processing will stop
after that line if a mapping was done by the line. Otherwise map-
ping continues with every line being processed. Using '!' is most
useful when you have a wildcard mapping line later in the file.
For example to map from the name admin or administrator to the
UNIX name
root you would use:
root = admin administrator
Or to map anyone in the UNIX group system to the UNIX name sys
you would use:
sys = @system
You can have as many mappings as you like in a username map file.
If your system supports the NIS NETGROUP option then the netgroup
database is checked before the /etc/group database for matching
groups.
You can map Windows usernames that have spaces in them by using
double quotes around the name. For example:
tridge = "Andrew Tridgell"
would map the windows username "Andrew Tridgell" to the unix
username "tridge".
The following example would map mary and fred to the unix user
sys, and map the rest to guest. Note the use of the '!' to tell
Samba to stop processing if it gets a match on that line:
!sys = mary fred
guest = *
Note that the remapping is applied to all occurrences of user-
names. Thus if you connect to \servered and fred is remapped to
mary then you will actually be connecting to \serverry and will
need to supply a password suitable for mary not fred. The only
exception to this is the username passed to the password server
(if you have one). The password server will receive whatever
username the client supplies without modification.
Also note that no reverse mapping is done. The main effect this
has is with printing. Users who have been mapped may have trouble
deleting print jobs as PrintManager under WfWg will think they
don't own the print job.
Samba versions prior to 3.0.8 would only support reading the
fully qualified username (e.g.: DOMAINser) from the username map
when performing a kerberos login from a client. However, when
looking up a map entry for a user authenticated by NTLM[SSP],
only the login name would be used for matches. This resulted in
inconsistent behavior sometimes even on the same server.
The following functionality is obeyed in version 3.0.8 and later:
When performing local authentication, the username map is applied
to the login name before attempting to authenticate the connec-
tion.
When relying upon a external domain controller for validating
authentication requests, smbd will apply the username map to the
fully qualified username (i.e. DOMAINser) only after the user has
been successfully authenticated.
An example of use is:
username map = /usr/local/samba/lib/users.map
Default: username map = # no username map
username map script (G)
This script is a mutually exclusive alternative to the username
map parameter. This parameter specifies and external program or
script that must accept a single command line option (the user-
name transmitted in the authentication request) and return a line
line on standard output (the name to which the account should
mapped). In this way, it is possible to store username map tables
in an LDAP or NIS directory services.
Default: username map script =
Example: username map script = /etc/samba/scripts/mapusers.sh
usershare allow guests (G)
This parameter controls whether user defined shares are allowed
to be accessed by non-authenticated users or not. It is the
equivalent of allowing people who can create a share the option
of setting guest ok = yes in a share definition. Due to the secu-
rity sensitive nature of this the default is set to off.
Default: usershare allow guests = no
usershare max shares (G)
This parameter specifies the number of user defined shares that
are allowed to be created by users belonging to the group owning
the usershare directory. If set to zero (the default) user
defined shares are ignored.
Default: usershare max shares = 0
usershare owner only (G)
This parameter controls whether the pathname exported by a user
defined shares must be owned by the user creating the user
defined share or not. If set to True (the default) then smbd
checks that the directory path being shared is owned by the user
who owns the usershare file defining this share and refuses to
create the share if not. If set to False then no such check is
performed and any directory path may be exported regardless of
who owns it.
Default: usershare owner only = True
usershare path (G)
This parameter specifies the absolute path of the directory on
the filesystem used to store the user defined share definition
files. This directory must be owned by root, and have no access
for other, and be writable only by the group owner. In addition
the "sticky" bit must also be set, restricting rename and delete
to owners of a file (in the same way the /tmp directory is usu-
ally configured). Members of the group owner of this directory
are the users allowed to create usershares. If this parameter is
undefined then no user defined shares are allowed.
For example, a valid usershare directory might be
/usr/local/samba/lib/usershares, set up as follows.
ls -ld /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares/
drwxrwx--T 2 root power_users 4096 2006-05-05 12:27 /usr/local/samba/lib/usershares/
In this case, only members of the group "power_users" can create
user defined shares.
Default: usershare path = NULL
usershare prefix allow list (G)
This parameter specifies a list of absolute pathnames the root of
which are allowed to be exported by user defined share defini-
tions. If the pathname exported doesn't start with one of the
strings in this list the user defined share will not be allowed.
This allows the Samba administrator to restrict the directories
on the system that can be exported by user defined shares.
If there is a "usershare prefix deny list" and also a "usershare
prefix allow list" the deny list is processed first, followed by
the allow list, thus leading to the most restrictive interpreta-
tion.
Default: usershare prefix allow list = NULL
Example: usershare prefix allow list = /home /data /space
usershare prefix deny list (G)
This parameter specifies a list of absolute pathnames the root of
which are NOT allowed to be exported by user defined share defi-
nitions. If the pathname exported starts with one of the strings
in this list the user defined share will not be allowed. Any
pathname not starting with one of these strings will be allowed
to be exported as a usershare. This allows the Samba administra-
tor to restrict the directories on the system that can be
exported by user defined shares.
If there is a "usershare prefix deny list" and also a "usershare
prefix allow list" the deny list is processed first, followed by
the allow list, thus leading to the most restrictive interpreta-
tion.
Default: usershare prefix deny list = NULL
Example: usershare prefix deny list = /etc /dev /private
usershare template share (G)
User defined shares only have limited possible parameters such as
path, guest ok etc. This parameter allows usershares to "cloned"
from an existing share. If "usershare template share" is set to
the name of an existing share, then all usershares created have
their defaults set from the parameters set on this share.
The target share may be set to be invalid for real file sharing
by setting the parameter "-valid = False" on the template share
definition. This causes it not to be seen as a real exported
share but to be able to be used as a template for usershares.
Default: usershare template share = NULL
Example: usershare template share = template_share
use sendfile (S)
If this parameter is yes, and the sendfile() system call is sup-
ported by the underlying operating system, then some SMB read
calls (mainly ReadAndX and ReadRaw) will use the more efficient
sendfile system call for files that are exclusively oplocked.
This may make more efficient use of the system CPU's and cause
Samba to be faster. Samba automatically turns this off for
clients that use protocol levels lower than NT LM 0.12 and when
it detects a client is Windows 9x (using sendfile from Linux will
cause these clients to fail).
Default: use sendfile = false
use spnego (G)
This variable controls controls whether samba will try to use
Simple and Protected NEGOciation (as specified by rfc2478) with
WindowsXP and Windows2000 clients to agree upon an authentication
mechanism.
Unless further issues are discovered with our SPNEGO implementa-
tion, there is no reason this should ever be disabled.
Default: use spnego = yes
utmp (G)
This boolean parameter is only available if Samba has been con-
figured and compiled with the option --with-utmp. If set to yes
then Samba will attempt to add utmp or utmpx records (depending
on the UNIX system) whenever a connection is made to a Samba
server. Sites may use this to record the user connecting to a
Samba share.
Due to the requirements of the utmp record, we are required to
create a unique identifier for the incoming user. Enabling this
option creates an n^2 algorithm to find this number. This may
impede performance on large installations.
Default: utmp = no
utmp directory (G)
This parameter is only available if Samba has been configured and
compiled with the option --with-utmp. It specifies a directory
pathname that is used to store the utmp or utmpx files (depending
on the UNIX system) that record user connections to a Samba
server. By default this is not set, meaning the system will use
whatever utmp file the native system is set to use (usually
/var/run/utmp on Linux).
Default: utmp directory = # Determined automatically
Example: utmp directory = /var/run/utmp
-valid (S)
This parameter indicates whether a share is valid and thus can be
used. When this parameter is set to false, the share will be in
no way visible nor accessible.
This option should not be used by regular users but might be of
help to developers. Samba uses this option internally to mark
shares as deleted.
Default: -valid = yes
valid users (S)
This is a list of users that should be allowed to login to this
service. Names starting with '@', '+' and '&' are interpreted
using the same rules as described in the invalid users parameter.
If this is empty (the default) then any user can login. If a
username is in both this list and the invalid users list then
access is denied for that user.
The current servicename is substituted for %S. This is useful in
the [homes] section.
Default: valid users = # No valid users list (anyone can login)
Example: valid users = greg, @pcusers
veto files (S)
This is a list of files and directories that are neither visible
nor accessible. Each entry in the list must be separated by a
'/', which allows spaces to be included in the entry. '*' and '?'
can be used to specify multiple files or directories as in DOS
wildcards.
Each entry must be a unix path, not a DOS path and must not
include the unix directory separator '/'.
Note that the case sensitive option is applicable in vetoing
files.
One feature of the veto files parameter that it is important to
be aware of is Samba's behaviour when trying to delete a direc-
tory. If a directory that is to be deleted contains nothing but
veto files this deletion will fail unless you also set the delete
veto files parameter to yes.
Setting this parameter will affect the performance of Samba, as
it will be forced to check all files and directories for a match
as they are scanned.
Examples of use include:
; Veto any files containing the word Security,
; any ending in .tmp, and any directory containing the
; word root.
veto files = /*Security*/*.tmp/*root*/
; Veto the Apple specific files that a NetAtalk server
; creates.
veto files = /.AppleDouble/.bin/.AppleDesktop/Network Trash Folder/
Default: veto files = No files or directories are vetoed.
veto oplock files (S)
This parameter is only valid when the oplocks parameter is turned
on for a share. It allows the Samba administrator to selectively
turn off the granting of oplocks on selected files that match a
wildcarded list, similar to the wildcarded list used in the veto
files parameter.
You might want to do this on files that you know will be heavily
contended for by clients. A good example of this is in the Net-
Bench SMB benchmark program, which causes heavy client contention
for files ending in .SEM. To cause Samba not to grant oplocks on
these files you would use the line (either in the [global] sec-
tion or in the section for the particular NetBench share.
An example of use is:
veto oplock files = /.*SEM/
Default: veto oplock files = # No files are vetoed for oplock
grants
vfs object
This parameter is a synonym for vfs objects.
vfs objects (S)
This parameter specifies the backend names which are used for
Samba VFS I/O operations. By default, normal disk I/O operations
are used but these can be overloaded with one or more VFS
objects.
Default: vfs objects =
Example: vfs objects = extd_audit recycle
volume (S)
This allows you to override the volume label returned for a
share. Useful for CDROMs with installation programs that insist
on a particular volume label.
Default: volume = # the name of the share
wide links (S)
This parameter controls whether or not links in the UNIX file
system may be followed by the server. Links that point to areas
within the directory tree exported by the server are always
allowed; this parameter controls access only to areas that are
outside the directory tree being exported.
Note that setting this parameter can have a negative effect on
your server performance due to the extra system calls that Samba
has to do in order to perform the link checks.
Default: wide links = yes
winbind cache time (G)
This parameter specifies the number of seconds the winbindd(8)
daemon will cache user and group information before querying a
Windows NT server again.
This does not apply to authentication requests, these are always
evaluated in real time unless the winbind offline logon option
has been enabled.
Default: winbind cache time = 300
winbind enum groups (G)
On large installations using winbindd(8) it may be necessary to
suppress the enumeration of groups through the setgrent(), get-
grent() and endgrent() group of system calls. If the winbind enum
groups parameter is no, calls to the getgrent() system call will
not return any data.
Warning
Turning off group enumeration may cause some programs to behave
oddly. Default: winbind enum groups = no
winbind enum users (G)
On large installations using winbindd(8) it may be necessary to
suppress the enumeration of users through the setpwent(), getp-
went() and endpwent() group of system calls. If the winbind enum
users parameter is no, calls to the getpwent system call will not
return any data.
Warning
Turning off user enumeration may cause some programs to behave
oddly. For example, the finger program relies on having access to
the full user list when searching for matching usernames.
Default: winbind enum users = no
winbind expand groups (G)
This option controls the maximum depth that winbindd will tra-
verse when flattening nested group memberships of Windows domain
groups. This is different from the winbind nested groups option
which implements the Windows NT4 model of local group nesting.
The "winbind expand groups" parameter specifically applies to the
membership of domain groups.
Be aware that a high value for this parameter can result in sys-
tem slowdown as the main parent winbindd daemon must perform the
group unrolling and will be unable to answer incoming NSS or
authentication requests during this time.
Default: winbind expand groups = 1
winbind nested groups (G)
If set to yes, this parameter activates the support for nested
groups. Nested groups are also called local groups or aliases.
They work like their counterparts in Windows: Nested groups are
defined locally on any machine (they are shared between DC's
through their SAM) and can contain users and global groups from
any trusted SAM. To be able to use nested groups, you need to run
nss_winbind.
Default: winbind nested groups = yes
winbind normalize names (G)
This parameter controls whether winbindd will replace whitespace
in user and group names with an underscore (_) character. For
example, whether the name "Space Kadet" should be replaced with
the string "space_kadet". Frequently Unix shell scripts will have
difficulty with usernames contains whitespace due to the default
field separator in the shell. Do not enable this option if the
underscore character is used in account names within your domain
Default: winbind normalize names = no
Example: winbind normalize names = yes
winbind nss info (G)
This parameter is designed to control how Winbind retrieves Name
Service Information to construct a user's home directory and
login shell. Currently the following settings are available:
o template - The default, using the parameters of template
shell and template homedir)
o sfu - When Samba is running in security = ads and your
Active Directory Domain Controller does support the
Microsoft "Services for Unix" (SFU) LDAP schema, winbind
can retrieve the login shell and the home directory
attributes directly from your Directory Server. Note that
retrieving UID and GID from your ADS-Server requires to use
idmap backend = idmap_ad as well.
Default: winbind nss info = template
Example: winbind nss info = template sfu
winbind offline logon (G)
This parameter is designed to control whether Winbind should
allow to login with the pam_winbind module using Cached Creden-
tials. If enabled, winbindd will store user credentials from suc-
cessful logins encrypted in a local cache.
Default: winbind offline logon = false
Example: winbind offline logon = true
winbind refresh tickets (G)
This parameter is designed to control whether Winbind should
refresh Kerberos Tickets retrieved using the pam_winbind module.
Default: winbind refresh tickets = false
Example: winbind refresh tickets = true
winbind rpc only (G)
Setting this parameter to yes forces winbindd to use RPC instead
of LDAP to retrieve information from Domain Controllers.
Default: winbind rpc only = no
winbind separator (G)
This parameter allows an admin to define the character used when
listing a username of the form of DOMAIN \fIuser. This parameter
is only applicable when using the pam_winbind.so and nss_win-
bind.so modules for UNIX services.
Please note that setting this parameter to + causes problems with
group membership at least on glibc systems, as the character + is
used as a special character for NIS in /etc/group.
Default: winbind separator = '\'
Example: winbind separator = +
winbind trusted domains only (G)
This parameter is designed to allow Samba servers that are mem-
bers of a Samba controlled domain to use UNIX accounts distrib-
uted via NIS, rsync, or LDAP as the uid's for winbindd users in
the hosts primary domain. Therefore, the user DOMAIN\user1 would
be mapped to the account user1 in /etc/passwd instead of allocat-
ing a new uid for him or her.
This parameter is now deprecated in favor of the newer idmap_nss
backend. Refer to the idmap domains smb.conf option and the
idmap_nss(8) man page for more information.
Default: winbind trusted domains only = no
winbind use default domain (G)
This parameter specifies whether the winbindd(8) daemon should
operate on users without domain component in their username.
Users without a domain component are treated as is part of the
winbindd server's own domain. While this does not benifit Windows
users, it makes SSH, FTP and e-mail function in a way much closer
to the way they would in a native unix system.
Default: winbind use default domain = no
Example: winbind use default domain = yes
wins hook (G)
When Samba is running as a WINS server this allows you to call an
external program for all changes to the WINS database. The pri-
mary use for this option is to allow the dynamic update of exter-
nal name resolution databases such as dynamic DNS.
The wins hook parameter specifies the name of a script or exe-
cutable that will be called as follows:
wins_hook operation name nametype ttl IP_list
o The first argument is the operation and is one of "add",
"delete", or "refresh". In most cases the operation can be
ignored as the rest of the parameters provide sufficient
information. Note that "refresh" may sometimes be called
when the name has not previously been added, in that case
it should be treated as an add.
o The second argument is the NetBIOS name. If the name is not
a legal name then the wins hook is not called. Legal names
contain only letters, digits, hyphens, underscores and
periods.
o The third argument is the NetBIOS name type as a 2 digit
hexadecimal number.
o The fourth argument is the TTL (time to live) for the name
in seconds.
o The fifth and subsequent arguments are the IP addresses
currently registered for that name. If this list is empty
then the name should be deleted.
An example script that calls the BIND dynamic DNS update pro-
gram nsupdate is provided in the examples directory of the
Samba source code.
No default
wins proxy (G)
This is a boolean that controls if nmbd(8) will respond to broad-
cast name queries on behalf of other hosts. You may need to set
this to yes for some older clients.
Default: wins proxy = no
wins server (G)
This specifies the IP address (or DNS name: IP address for pref-
erence) of the WINS server that nmbd(8) should register with. If
you have a WINS server on your network then you should set this
to the WINS server's IP.
You should point this at your WINS server if you have a multi-
subnetted network.
If you want to work in multiple namespaces, you can give every
wins server a 'tag'. For each tag, only one (working) server will
be queried for a name. The tag should be separated from the ip
address by a colon.
Note
You need to set up Samba to point to a WINS server if you have
multiple subnets and wish cross-subnet browsing to work cor-
rectly. See the chapter in the Samba3-HOWTO on Network Browsing.
Default: wins server =
Example: wins server = mary:192.9.200.1 fred:192.168.3.199
mary:192.168.2.61 # For this example when querying a certain
name, 192.19.200.1 will be asked first and if that doesn't
respond 192.168.2.61. If either of those doesn't know the name
192.168.3.199 will be queried.
Example: wins server = 192.9.200.1 192.168.2.61
wins support (G)
This boolean controls if the nmbd(8) process in Samba will act as
a WINS server. You should not set this to yes unless you have a
multi-subnetted network and you wish a particular nmbd to be your
WINS server. Note that you should NEVER set this to yes on more
than one machine in your network.
Default: wins support = no
workgroup (G)
This controls what workgroup your server will appear to be in
when queried by clients. Note that this parameter also controls
the Domain name used with the security = domain setting.
Default: workgroup = WORKGROUP
Example: workgroup = MYGROUP
writable
This parameter is a synonym for writeable.
writeable (S)
Inverted synonym for read only.
No default
write cache size (S)
If this integer parameter is set to non-zero value, Samba will
create an in-memory cache for each oplocked file (it does not do
this for non-oplocked files). All writes that the client does not
request to be flushed directly to disk will be stored in this
cache if possible. The cache is flushed onto disk when a write
comes in whose offset would not fit into the cache or when the
file is closed by the client. Reads for the file are also served
from this cache if the data is stored within it.
This cache allows Samba to batch client writes into a more effi-
cient write size for RAID disks (i.e. writes may be tuned to be
the RAID stripe size) and can improve performance on systems
where the disk subsystem is a bottleneck but there is free memory
for userspace programs.
The integer parameter specifies the size of this cache (per
oplocked file) in bytes.
Default: write cache size = 0
Example: write cache size = 262144 # for a 256k cache size per
file
write list (S)
This is a list of users that are given read-write access to a
service. If the connecting user is in this list then they will be
given write access, no matter what the read only option is set
to. The list can include group names using the @group syntax.
Note that if a user is in both the read list and the write list
then they will be given write access.
By design, this parameter will not work with the security = share
in Samba 3.0.
Default: write list =
Example: write list = admin, root, @staff
write raw (G)
This parameter controls whether or not the server will support
raw write SMB's when transferring data from clients. You should
never need to change this parameter.
Default: write raw = yes
wtmp directory (G)
This parameter is only available if Samba has been configured and
compiled with the option --with-utmp. It specifies a directory
pathname that is used to store the wtmp or wtmpx files (depending
on the UNIX system) that record user connections to a Samba
server. The difference with the utmp directory is the fact that
user info is kept after a user has logged out.
By default this is not set, meaning the system will use whatever
utmp file the native system is set to use (usually /var/run/wtmp
on Linux).
Default: wtmp directory =
Example: wtmp directory = /var/log/wtmp
WARNINGS
Although the configuration file permits service names to contain spa-
ces, your client software may not. Spaces will be ignored in compar-
isons anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem - but be aware of the possi-
bility.
On a similar note, many clients - especially DOS clients - limit ser-
vice names to eight characters. smbd(8) has no such limitation, but
attempts to connect from such clients will fail if they truncate the
service names. For this reason you should probably keep your service
names down to eight characters in length.
Use of the [homes] and [printers] special sections make life for an
administrator easy, but the various combinations of default attributes
can be tricky. Take extreme care when designing these sections. In par-
ticular, ensure that the permissions on spool directories are correct.
VERSION
This man page is correct for version 3.0 of the Samba suite.
SEE ALSO
samba(7), smbpasswd(8), swat(8), smbd(8), nmbd(8), smbclient(1),
nmblookup(1), testparm(1), testprns(1).
AUTHOR
The original Samba software and related utilities were created by
Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open
Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.
The original Samba man pages were written by Karl Auer. The man page
sources were converted to YODL format (another excellent piece of Open
Source software, available at ftp://ftp.icce.rug.nl/pub/unix/) and
updated for the Samba 2.0 release by Jeremy Allison. The conversion to
DocBook for Samba 2.2 was done by Gerald Carter. The conversion to Doc-
Book XML 4.2 for Samba 3.0 was done by Alexander Bokovoy.
smb.conf(5)
Mac OS X 10.6 - Generated Thu Sep 17 20:25:21 CDT 2009