samba the right way

thebassist · n00b Joined: 31 May 2003 Posts: 12

Can someone point me in the right direction to a good samba tutorial. I've got Samba running on my gateway/router/file server and it seems to be working OK. However, it horably unstable. I'm trying to place mp3 on it, about 10 gigs, and transfering the files is a horable nightmare. using my OSX laptop every once in a while ( after about 20 files are copied ) I get a random error. The same occurs on my windowsxp box. The problem is that when these errors occur it seems to bring down the whole machine. All samba mounts become unusable, and the whole thing is just shot, usually requires a full restart of the machine. Is this a problem with another aspect? I know it's gonna be hard for you to answer that question but here's some info. It's an athlon 1200 running at 800 for coolness sake, running a 40 gig 5200rpm hard drive, 2 nics. I have hda4 mounted in /mnt/files and several subdirectories, which I'm using each as a samba share. hda4 is ext3.
Here's my smb.conf file. Before you look at this please keep in mind that this was actually my first time dealing with a server situation, and I'd appreciate any advice, especially pertainint to security. I'd really like to know how to do samba "the right way"

root@thor samba # more smb.conf
[global]
security = user
workgroup = SHAQ
netbios name = THOR
wins support = yes
server string = %h server (Samba %v)
encrypt passwords = Yes
syslog = 0
max log size = 1000
log file = /var/log/samba/samba.log.%m
log level = 2
invalid users = root
hosts allow = 192.168.0.
interfaces = eth1
guest account = guest

[home]
comment = Home Directories
read only = No
writable = yes
printable = no
create mask = 0766

[music]
comment = Music
path = /mnt/files/music
read only = no
writable = yes
printable = no
create mask = 0766

[muvids]
comment = Music videos
path = /mnt/files/muvids
read only = no
writable = yes
printable = no
create mask = 0766

[download]
comment = downloaded files
path = /mnt/files/download
read only = no
writable = yes
printable = no
create mask = 0766

[school]
comment = school work
path = /mnt/files/school
read only = no
writable = yes
printable = no
create mask = 0766

[backup]
comment = backups
path = /mnt/files/backup
read only = no
writable = yes
printable = no
create mode = 0766

thanks in advance
L8er

quattro · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 4:55 am Post subject:

I don't have a solution to your problem per se, just some insight that might help. For the record I have two Athlon XP PCs running Gentoo, one acts as a server; I also have a PowerMac G4 with OSX.

One of the goals of the server is to be an MP3 repository, which is shared via Samba. I initially installed and configured Samba on the server according to the "Gentoo Linux Desktop Configuration Guide". It seemed to work fine until I tried to copy over 10GB of MP3's from my OSX box. I got random errors and Samba seemed to destabilize, much like what you described. Ultimately what I had to do was create a tarball on the OSX box and then use scp to copy that to the server. At the time I just chalked it up as an OSX bug, but if you are experiencing similar problems with Windows XP I would say there is something more going on.

Another quirk that I encountered that may bite you, was playing MP3's from the server. What seemed natural to me was to mount the Samba share from Konquerer and drag the files to the xmms playlist. The files properly appeared in the playlist, however, I could not play the files from the Samba share. xmms treated the shared MP3's as zero length files. The files on the Samba share play fine in Kaboodle, just not xmms.

If you want an excellent book on doing "Samba the right way", you might check out "Using Samba" published by O'Reilly. I, unfortunately, haven't had time to delve into my copy.

tgoodaire · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 3:30 pm Post subject:

I also use my samba server as an mp3 repository. I've set up icecast on it, so that I can listen to my mp3s through xmms or winamp from work. It works great.

Samba also seems to give me strange errors.

You shouldn't have to reboot your whole box when samba goes screwy on you though. Can't you just restart samba?

/etc/init.d/samba restart
_________________
I bent my wookie.

neumax · n00b Joined: 05 May 2003 Posts: 43

tgoodaire · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:16 am Post subject:

You're right. I should write a how-to. I'll try and get it done in the next few days. I had a bunch of problems getting icecast working properly too.
_________________
I bent my wookie.

bashir · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 4:57 pm Post subject:

Hi!

There are many of sources that can cause your problem.

Some ideas:

Code:

wins support = yes

Perhaps it is better to make your Samba Box as the Local Domain Master

Code:

preferred master = yes

Perhaps you should change the resolve order

Code:

name resolve order = lmhosts wins bcast host

Or just adjust some tuning options with the socket options
have a look

BTW could you list your log (/var/log/samba/samba.log.%m) with an interrupt in it?

bashir