Share With Windows Using Samba

From PlugWiki

So you want to share files with your windows PCs, great. Note that this procedure works for the Alpha6 release, it might be slightly different for other versions. First you need to install samba:

aptitude install samba

Now you need to modify the configuration so that samba has your external. Fire up the text editor of your choice and modify /etc/samba/smb.conf

There are two things you need to do in this file

1. Be sure you are in the right workgroup. The default is WORKGROUP, so change that if you want something else.
2. Add the shares! For each share add a similar section of code. The title in brackets will show up as the folder name in windows.

[external]
   comment = External
   browseable = yes
   writeable = yes
   path = /mnt/external
   guest ok = yes

Note that you will need to change the path variable to point to your external harddrive location.

Save the file, and reload samba settings with the following command:

/etc/init.d/samba reload

Note that the name of the computer defaults to something like ubuntu. If you want it to be something different, change the name in the /etc/hostname file. Restart the computer when done (shutdown -r now) to get the new hostname.

Useful Reading

Official Ubuntu Documentation on Samba- has lots of information about everything. [1]

Book chapter that is a bit more focused on the config file. [2]