Recommendations for SMB/CIFS file server configuration

[Bryan O'Neal]

I agree with everything I have seen in this thread so far. If you are
a seasoned windows admin you can use Active Directory for central user
authentication and file level access with only about 10 -15 min worth
of work. Otherwise linux does not have (to the best of my knowledge)
easy central account management. Also if you feel frustrated by the
SMB permissions you can think of it like a windows share - you can
layer more security on top of it. With linux you just use ACL's but
enabling them requires editing your fstab and adding the ACL support
tag - and then remounting or simply rebooting.

It is all really simple so if your interested I can go into detail.


On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 12:57 PM, James Dugger <james.dugger at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm new to PLUG and new to LINUX but I have jumped in head first.  By
> head first I mean I have removed XP off of 4 desktops and Vista off my
> HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop and installed Ubuntu 10.04 i386 on each.  I
> have built an new headless server with and AMD Athelon (tripple core)
> 64bit chip and 2GB of DDR2 DRAM to be used as a file server, and print
> server to 3 printers.  I have installed 3 - 1TB drives in a RAID 5
> array (Configured as RAID on main board BIOS, no PCI controller) and
> software controlled using the OS which is Ubuntu 10.04 Server AMD
> 64bit.
>
> I am trying to configure the file server but with so many options and
> settings I admit that I am a bit lost.  My file server will need to be
> accessible to a couple of work computers that run Windows.  Also I
> have an Apple TV box that I am trying to convert to XBMC, the media
> for this will be stored on the file server.  With this I have
> installed Samba onto my server and desktops.  However I don't know if
> I should use samba (SMB) or CIFS for configuration.  With several
> different mount points and different security settings for each mount
> point, is SMB or CIFS better?  I want to minimize or more accurately
> centralize the administrative control of user access to the file
> server.  I know there are different ways to accomplish this and wanted
> to ask what others have found to work best given the small size and
> scale of this network.
>
> I am looking for recommendations in file server type (SMB, CIFS) and
> recommended configuration i.e. use of groups for users, passwords
> stored in database or text files and or matching user accounts in OS.
>
> Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
>
> --
> James
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