How to Share Files with Samba

Share User's Home Directory in Ubuntu

If you are looking to share a user's home directory on an Ubuntu 22.04 system using Samba, this article is for you. Samba is a popular open-source implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol for sharing files, printers, and other resources between computers.

In this article, we will walk you through the process of setting up Samba on Ubuntu 22.04 and sharing a user's home directory.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following:

• A working installation of Ubuntu 22.04

• A user account on the system

• Access to the terminal or console

Installing Samba

The first step is to install Samba on your system. To do this, open the terminal and run the following command:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install samba

Configuring Samba

Once Samba is installed, we need to configure it to share the user's home directory. To do this, we need to edit the Samba configuration file smb.conf. Open the file using the following command:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Add the following to the bottom of the file, replacing "username" with the actual username:

[username]
   path = /home/username
   valid users = username
   read only = no
   browsable = yes

Restarting Samba

Save the changes to the smb.conf file and close the text editor. Next, we need to restart Samba to apply the changes. Use the following command to restart Samba:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

Creating a Samba Password

Before we can access the shared directory, we need to create a Samba password for the user. Use the following command to do this, replacing "username" with the actual username:

sudo smbpasswd -a username

Accessing the Shared Directory

You can now access the shared directory from another computer on the same network using the following format:

\\<server-ip-address>\username

Enter the username and password when prompted to access the shared directory.

Conclusion

In this article, we have shown you how to share a user's home directory on an Ubuntu 22.04 system using Samba. We hope that this article has been helpful and that you now have a working Samba setup. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.