Debian 8 Installation for Samba File Server - Part Four

Accessing Debian File Server from Debian 8 GNOME Computer

Login to your Debian Server and find the IP address of the Debian File Server by typing:
ifconfig

The IP address for the server is:
192.168.1.16

On your Debian 8 GNOME computer, open a Files window.

Click Connect to Server

In the Server Address box, type
smb://192.168.1.16
and click Connect.

You will see the share folder on your Debian Server.

Close the Files window and open a new Files window. Click on the share on 192.168.1.16 and you will see the My Stuff folder and test.text file that was created in Part Three while using the Windows 7 computer.

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Debian 8 Installation for Samba File Server - Part Three

Accessing Debian File Server from a Windows 7 Computer

Now that the Debian File Server with Samba is up and running, we can now go to our Windows 7 computer to allow it to access files from the server. One way of doing this is by mapping a network drive.

Open Windows Explorer

Right click my computer and select Map network drive...

In this example, I have selected N: as my drive letter.

In the folder box, I typed in \\debian\share since debian is the name of the server and share was the name of the folder that was created on the file server.

Under Computer, you will see that the N: drive is now mapped to the share folder on the debian server.

That's it! Now you can create folders and various files to store on your Debian Samba File Server.

Example: Create a New Folder called "My Stuff"

Example #2: Create a text document called test

Let us see what the files look like on the Debian server...

Debian 8 Installation for Samba File Server - Part Two

Installing Samba and

Configuring "smb.conf" File

At this point, there is not much to look at since Debian was installed without a desktop environment (no graphical user interface). Everything will be done in a command line interface, so get ready to start typing some commands.

Step One:

Login in as root.

Enter your password.

You will see "#" prompt.

Step Two:

Install Samba by typing the following:

apt-get install samba samba-client

This will install samba onto the Debian server.

Step Three:

Configure the smb.conf file.

Before editing this file, let us make a copy of the original smb.conf file and name it smb.conf.back just in case we need to refer back to it from its original state.

cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak

Now use nano to edit the smb.conf file.

nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Go to the end of the file and insert the following lines:

[share]
comment = Debian File Server Share
path = /srv/samba/share
browsable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
create mask = 0755

Save the file and exit nano editor.

Step Four:
Create folder on Debian server where files will be stored and assign ownership.

mkdir -p /srv/samba/share
chown nobody.nogroup /srv/samba/share

Debian 8 Installation for Samba File Server - Part One

Installing Debian 8

I decided to update my file server from Ubuntu 12.04 to Debian 8. I have been using Debian 8 GNOME as a secondary operating system for my computer for about six months now that I wanted my file server to be using Debian too.

Installing Debian 8 was a simple process. I used the "Graphic install" option from the menu. Below are screenshots of installing Debian 8 64-bit using the debian-8.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso.

NOTE: This was done in VirtualBox.