Alrighty then, it appears the file server component of my storage machine is finally up and running, has survived a reboot and had a test write&read from both Windows (via SMB/CIFS, you know, Samba) and Linux (via the host machine). So now I'm going to run through a quick tutorial in setting up Samba on Ubuntu 14.04 (I've used a headless Server edition but whatever floats your boat) so you too can work towards creating a networked file server.

For this particular use case we're building a general purpose file server that anyone on the network can read and write to, a good setup if you don't have security needs or expect multiple computers to come and go (such as home fileserver for storing photos, backing up/sharing resources).

First things first, make sure you've got a directory set aside to be shared and make it readable/writeable by everyone:

	$ sudo mkdir /mnt/sdbmisc
	$ sudo chmod -R 0755 /mnt/sdbmisc
	$ sudo chown -R nobody:nogroup /mnt/sdbmisc

Now install Samba (in case you didn't choose to install it as a server role during OS installation):

	$ sudo apt-get update
	$ sudo apt-get install samba

Once installed, you'll notice when using `sudo` commands that there'll be a warning stating `no talloc stackframe at ../source3/param/loadparm.c:4864, leaking memory` or something similar. To stop this happening, run `sudo apt-get remove libpam-smbpass` (libpam-smbpass syncs system users/passwords with SMB user database and isn't really needed for our example).

Backup the original smb.conf configuration document:

	$ sudo mv /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak

Now edit the smb.conf file with your favourite text editor (i<3nano):

	$ sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

[global]
	workgroup = WORKGROUP
	server string = Samba Server %v
	netbios name = srvr1
	security = user
	map to guest = bad user
	name resolve order = bcast host
	dns proxy = no

[sdbmisc]
	path = /mnt/sdbmisc
	browsable =yes
	writable = yes
	guest ok = yes
	read only = no

Once it's all ready to go, run `sudo restart smbd` and Samba should start displaying your shares over the network to Windows computers!

If you have any questions or queries, feel free to Tweet me at [@judges119](https://twitter.com/judges119) or you can find my other contact details on [my website](http://az.id.au).