Configuring SAMBA

Using SAMBA at Carnegie Mellon

What is SAMBA?

SAMBA is a set of utilities that allow a Unix machine to offer file and printing services to Microsoft Networking hosts, via the SMB protocol. The SAMBA implementation of the Microsoft protocols is fairly complete, and is designed to allow a network administrator to configure SAMBA servers to be the core components of a Microsoft Networking infrastructure.

Windows Networking at Carnegie Mellon

In our environment, we are unable to guarantee full MS Networking services to all parts of campus at all times. To help aid in keeping MS network outages to a minimum, we require all SAMBA users to configure their machines to never offer WINS services, and never become a MS Networking browser. If you believe you need to offer these services via SAMBA, please contact us at advisor@andrew.cmu.edu.

Recommended Configuration

To do this, please add the following to your SAMBA configuration file (smb.conf):

#
# Carnegie Mellon Campus SAMBA Configuration
#
# Version 1.0:
#
#     Sep 8, 1998: ryan@andrew.cmu.edu: Created.
#     Oct 12, 2002: kevinm@andrew.cmu.edu: Updated IP list
#
[global]

# Join the CAMPUS workgroup
#
workgroup = CAMPUS

# Do NOT hand out domain info
#
domain logons = no

# Do NOT become a domain controller.
#
domain master = no

# Do NOT become a browse master
#
local master = no

# Do NOT be the preferred master.  This is redundant, but hey, better
# safe than sorry.  
#
preferred master = no

# Do NOT act as a WINS server.
#
wins support = no

# Do NOT proxy answer broadcast name queries for other hosts.  Samba
# server should NOT have names to hand out, as it is NOT a WINS
# server.  
#
wins proxy = no 

# ---------- Now setup things Samba may do. ----------

# Point to the real WINS server.
#
# This should allow you to specify more than one, but alas, it does not.
#
wins server = pgh-win-01.andrew.ad.cmu.edu

# And announce directly to the WINS servers, rather than broadcasting
# to the local (possibly non-existant) browse master.  This will allow
# SAMBA servers to share files and printers even if there are no local
# windows machines on their local subnet.
#
remote announce = pgh-win-01.andrew.ad.cmu.edu/CAMPUS