Category Archives: Solaris Express

Time to share your newly created ZFS volume via samba to your windows clients.  There is some CIFS / SMB support built into the kernel now, but i’ve grown used to the SMB server…

Fire up add software – click filesystems – enable filter for “smb”, there are three packages generally. I get all three, but you only need the kernel update and the server package. The other is the SMB client.

Once installed make sure you enable the server in servicesgui.

Ensure the filesystem does not have any permission issues. I usually run chmod -R 777 /share just to ensure everyone can access the files without issue.

Add some users into smb password file (U need to create the users and sync the passwords). I usually create a guest user profile

useradd guest

smbpasswd -a guest – it should prompt for password twice (this is the password you use from windows). Press enter twice to leave the password blank.

The configuration can be done via /etc/sfw/smb.conf or via the shared folders admin gui.

I prefer doing the admin via the /etc/sfw/smb.conffile as it tends to let you have more control than the basic options available to you via the GUI. The contents of the file are as follows;  (note: i have included alot of the setting as an example which may contridict other settings)

[global] – global settings, the following are obvious

workgroup = workgroup

server string = opensolaris

wins support = yes – lets your server act as a WINS box

[share] – share name

path = /raidz1/share – share path

available = yes – enabled?

browseable = yes

public = yes

valid users = user1, user2 – only these users can access the share

writable = yes – equivalent to read / write in windows share properties

read only = yes – sets the default permissions to read only

write list = user1, user2 – these users can write to the share. Overrides above “read only” setting.

There are some good examples within /etc/sfw/smb.conf-example. Look there for some tips.

You also have an option of managing samba via the web – SWAT (samba web admin t). To get this up an running enable the swat service svc:/network/swat:default then browse to http://server:901

Optimizing SMB

I’ve found that adding this to /etc/sfw/smb.conf helps throughput in some cases. Try for yourself;  (it tends to put a higher load on cpu)

[global]

aio read size = 1
aio write size = 1

Further to this entry i have discovered that the built in CIFS / SMB service is much more efficient since it is included as part of the kernel. See my other posts on setting up cifs

Updated : 9/08/2009

I’ve swapped back to samba due to the issues i’ve had with cifs in the later releases. Remember if you wish to swap back to samba yo uneed to remove the sharesmb properties from each of your zfs shares – else on reboot zfs will re-enable the server/smb service.

There are some additional settings to ensure that your file server is the master browser for your workgroup. Put these under your [global]

[global]
domain master = Yes
local master = Yes
preferred master = Yes
os level = 35

Apparently on windows the os level reaches only 32 – so setting this to 35 ensures that your file server remains the master browser when an election is performed.