Create a Network Share in Linux using Samba via CLI and access using Samba Client

Setting up the share on Linux

Install Samba:

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

For creating a secured share, make a system account for authentication to access samba shares, here I named the user “shareuser” in an obvious way you can, of course, pick any name:

$ sudo useradd shareuser
$ sudo passwd shareuser

Update password for the user “shareuser”.

Check if the user has been added successfully:

$ awk -F':' '{ print $1}' /etc/passwd

“shareuser” added successfully

Add this account in smbpasswd file to be used by samba authentication:

$ sudo smbpasswd -a shareuser

Configure the “shared” directory (or whatever you choose to name your directory that is to be shared):

$sudo mkdir /opt/shared

Make a safe backup copy of the original smb.conf file to your home folder, in case you make an error:

$ sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf ~

Edit Samba configuration file “/etc/samba/smb.conf” and add the following at the very end of the file:

Here replace [shared] with the name of your directory, modify the path accordingly too, and replace “shareuser” with whatever you chose to name your user.

Restart smb and nmb services of the system:

$ systemctl restart smbd.service
$ systemctl restart nmbd.service

Use testparm command to check your smb.conf for any syntax errors:

$ testparm

If there are no syntax errors you should be able to see something like this, with the [shared] entry at the bottom.

Thus, we created a shared folder named “shared” with “shareuser” as the username to be used for accessing this folder on another machine.

Access the SMB network share on Linux:

Installing Samba client will give you a CLI to work with your SMB share:

$ sudo apt-get install smbclient

List all shares available on the host using the IP address or hostname:

$ smbclient -L //<HOST_IP_OR_NAME>/<folder_name> -U <user>

Here <user> is the user we created in the host machine. Connect to the shared folder using:

$ smbclient //<HOST_IP_OR_NAME>/<folder_name> -U <user>

Note: The default user group of samba is "WORKGROUP".

You can type ‘h’ to get help with smbclient. For instance ‘ls’ would show the contents of the shared folder:

Troubleshoot Option- If you’re getting permission denied error when trying to modify the content of the shared folder, modify ownership and permission for the folder:

$ sudo chown <username>:<groupname> /<path to shared folder>
$ sudo chmod 770 /<path to shared folder>