[ale] samba conf

[Jeff Hubbs]

Luis -

Looks like some other (more capable than me) people are jumping in with help
too, but let me see if I can clarify the stuff I said that you say you don't
"get" yet.  

An instance of Linux (i.e., Linux running on a single system) has a mass
storage system that can be thought of as an upside-down tree (right-side-up
tree roots?) that starts with / (partial representation below - hope you can
read mail in fixed-font):

                  /
                  |
   -----------------------------------
   |        |         |         |         
  /var    /home     /usr      /etc
                      |
            --------------------
            |         |
      /usr/local  /usr/src

And so on.  Once you've created a partition and formatted it, you can use
mkdir to create a directory anywhere on this tree and then use the mount
command to attach the partition to that location.  I've been mounting my
additional partitions "underneath" /, but you may find it more sensible to
mount yours underneath /home/samba.  As someone else has already said, using
NFS or smbmount, you can have whole sections of your tree that aren't even
on the same computer.  

To give you an idea where this could take you, you could set up a whole
office's worth of Linux 
workstations and have them mount parts of /usr and /etc from a central
machine for the sake of client-side disk space conservation.

I also wanted to make sure that you understand that the issue of making a
partition on a drive and getting it formatted and mounted is completely
separate from the issue of getting the partition shared out to WinNT.  The
latter involves the Samba suite, which acts upon whatever directory
arrangement you present it with.  Once you get the disk stuff behind you,
then it's time to take on the Samba stuff.

The learning curve here is significant.  Acknowledge to yourself that you're
trying to achieve a number of significant accomplishments at once:  install
Linux, add a drive, set up Samba.  I was able to get Samba to work
successfully on the THIRD or FOURTH Linux system I set up.  Once you have
reached a comfort level with the machine on its own, I believe you will be
able to get Samba going just fine - and once you have a comfort level with
THAT, I expect you ought to be able to eliminate ALL FOUR NT file servers.

This gets me to thinking.  It's important for you to go ahead and understand
Samba, but before you try to go whole hog, I would recommend that you pause
and try to get two more things under your belt:  working with tape drives
and RAID (either in software or hardware).  To set up a real file server
regardless of OS, you need to be able to back the puppy up and survive the
loss of a hard drive.  

- Jeff


-----Original Message-----
 From: Luis Luna [mailto:Luis at btr-architects.com]
Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 5:23 PM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: RE: [ale] samba conf



Dear God,
I just want to have one folder on the second harddrive, share the folder, I
will be the only one that needs access to it, mount the folder from my NT
box, and thats it. I don't get "> where you "hang" a disk partition.  So,
when you set up a
> partition in fdisk
> or Disk Druid and give it a mount point like /var or /home, you have
> basically "hung" that partition to a place on the tree where the install
> procedure would have otherwise just created a directory in whatever
> partition you had set up as /.  This will become more intuitive over
time," I read and re-read the linux manual and man pages, I can't come up
with how to format a drive and have a folder on it that is shared. MKFS is
somewhat cryptic, at least to me. How do I list what is on a drive other
than /? I mean do I type cd /dev/hdc1/foldername? Is there a "linux for
dummies" book? I have one of the commercial linux books, one on redhat ver,
I still don't get it after reading the chapter over and over again. My God,
maybe using windows/nt/mac's for the past 9 years has knocked I.Q. points
from my brain. /end ramble/ .
So there I stand, here is my problem:
1. Share a hard-drive /dev/hdc1 which I installed after I ran the caldera
opnlinux 2.3 program.
2. I want one folder on this hard-drive. I will create subfolders from my NT
box when I connect to it.
3. I don't know what to put in my fstab file.
4. I have an NT box as domain controller.
5. NT boxes will be the only thing that connects to it.
6. My name is Luis - and I am a total newbie.
7. Seriously, any more pointers? I have 4 NT servers that are just file
servers, if I can get linux to samba the files, I will get rid of at least 2
servers, or is the learning curve so great that I am best off with NT?
Sincerely,

(¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯)
    Luis Carlos Luna, Associate AIA
         Work: 612.332.1234
    mailto:luis at btr-architects.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Hubbs [mailto:Jhubbs at niit.com]
> Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 4:47 PM
> To: Luis Luna; ale at ale.org
> Subject: RE: [ale] samba conf
>
>
> Luis -
>
> By way of elaboration, regardless of your drive arrangement, your system's
> files, directories, devices, and other weird stuff I haven't
> figured out yet
> (/proc?) is all logically arranged as a hierarchy underneath /.
> If you set
> up a system with nothing but one Linux native partition and one Linux swap
> partition, your native partition (presumably /dev/hda1) will have
> everything
> in it (I think this will break if hda1 extends past the 1024th cylinder on
> the drive).  A "mount point" is basically the place on this
> upside-down tree
> where you "hang" a disk partition.  So, when you set up a
> partition in fdisk
> or Disk Druid and give it a mount point like /var or /home, you have
> basically "hung" that partition to a place on the tree where the install
> procedure would have otherwise just created a directory in whatever
> partition you had set up as /.  This will become more intuitive over time,
> and you will also be able to see how cool it is to "hang" smb shares (via
> smbmount) and NFS exports from other machines just like they were
> partitions
> on your own machine.
>
> One compelling reason to do the recommended thing where you make separate
> partitions for /usr, /usr/local, /var, /home, and sometimes even /etc is
> that overgrowth in one cannot cause problems in another.  So, if you add
> this other drive and use it for Samba - suppose you give it a
> mount point of
> /samba or whatever - no one will be able to fill the partition up
> and screw
> up your system (you'd be wise to implement disk quotas anyway to keep the
> magg...oops, USERS from being able to keep EACH OTHER from writing to the
> share by filling it up).  You invite problems if your samba share can grow
> without bound on the same partition as, say, /var.
>
> - Jeff
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Luis Luna [mailto:Luis at btr-architects.com]
> Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 4:00 PM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: RE: [ale] samba conf
>
>
> Okay here are the answers to the questions about my conf, thanks for the
> fast reply by the way!
> 1.<For user access, did you enable
> encrypted passwords on the linux box? (recommended) If not, did
> you turn off
> encrypted passwords on the Winbloze box? (not recommended).>
> Reply- I turned on encrypted passwords on the linux box, edited the conf
> file where the howto's and comments said to.
> 2.It's complaining "User unknown", not "Password invalid", so
> What username
> are you logging into
> winbloze with?
> Reply - When I attempt to connect to a visable share on the linux box - a
> dialog box pops up and states "Incorrect password or unknown username Fpr
> \\sol\homes" I type in the user name I set up on both the linux
> box and the
> NT box, both passwords being the same. They are the same on the NT box,
> linux box, and samba.
> 3. Do you really want to mount /dev/hdc1 as /? - As for the second hard
> drive, you can NOT have more than one '/' (root)
> partition in a *nix system, so mount the new drive as "/public"
> or "/shared"
> or something like that. Then setup samba to share that partition.
> Reply - Oh, did not know that! Doh! I am coming from a windows/dos envir.
> and I am used to formatting a harddrive and sharing the drive.
> I looked on Caldera website for installing/formatting a second drive and I
> did't come across a difinitive way to setup a second drive.
> My fstab looks like this:
> /dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
> devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
> /proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
> /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto defaults,user,noauto 0 0
> /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
> /dev/hdc1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
> Question: If I change /dev/hdc1 / to /dev/hdc1 /shared will it
> automatically
> create /shared?
> 4. Questions that come to mind regarding Samba:  are you trying
> to integrate
> into a pre-existing NT domain environment?  Are you sure you
> should even be
> using smbpasswd?
> Reply - Yes, existing NT domain, smbpasswd is what I read that I
> should do.
> Maybe I read the howto's and did't understand them clearly? Very likely. I
> tried to read as much as possible before I posted.
> Thanks!
> (¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯)
>     Luis Carlos Luna, Associate AIA
>          Work: 612.332.1234
>     mailto:luis at btr-architects.com
>
>