CentOS 7 SAMBA Standalone Server

This guide will detail how to build a standalone SAMBA server on CentOS 7. I used a HP MicroServer Gen8 with an Adaptec 6405E RAID card and 4x Western Digital Red 2TB drives in RAID 10. This guide will also work with RHEL 7.

Because I’m becoming lazy in my old age I’ll presume you’ve already installed CentOS 7 (I used the minimal ISO) and have it configured with networking and you’re syncing time with your local NTP server (mine is ‘au.pool.ntp.org‘) and have also run an initial ‘yum update -y‘ to make sure you’ve got all the latest basic system updates.

1. Install SAMBA

   yum install -y samba

2. Disable SELinux (Not recommended in corporate production but I’m keeping things simple)

   setenforce 0
   sed -i 's/SELINUX=enforcing/SELINUX=permissive/' /etc/sysconfig/selinux

3. Rename the default SAMBA config

   mv /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.orig

4. Use the following config file. You might need to customise it based on your requirements, which I’ve highlighted in bold, but you can use the defaults for testing.

   vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

   [global]
       workgroup = WORKGROUP
       server string = Samba Server Version %v
       security = user
       passdb backend = tdbsam
   
       local master = yes
       preferred master = yes
       socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=131072 SO_SNDBUF=131072
       use sendfile = true
   
       log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
   
   #============================ Share Definitions ==============================
   
   [samba]
       comment = SAMBA Data
       path = /data/samba
       writeable = yes
       force user = samba
       force group = samba
       force directory mode = 0770
       force create mode = 0660
       directory mode 0770
       create mode 0660
   

5. Add a user to own your data

   groupadd samba
   useradd -g samba samba
   smbpasswd -a samba
   # Specify your password when prompted.

6. Create the filesystem location where the SAMBA data will be stored

   mkdir /data/samba
   chown samba.samba /data/samba
   chmod 0770 /data/samba

7. Allow the SAMBA services through the firewall

   firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=samba
   firewall-cmd --reload

8. Start the SAMBA services

   systemctl enable smb
   systemctl enable nmb
   systemctl start smb
   systemctl start nmb

9. You should now be able to connect to your SAMBA server using its IP or hostname.