Updated 2/23/2026
A file servers is a computer attached to a network that provides space for storing and sharing files [1].
A file server may be an oridinary computer or dedicated hardware such as Synology's Network Attached Storage (NAS).
Some file servers are secure (SMB) and some non-secure (NFS).
Samba is a secure Linux file server that will work with both Microsoft Windows and Linux clients. It was first released in 1992. It is a program that implements the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol and/or the Common Internet File System (cifs)Protocol.
SMB was developed by IBM. Microsoft's developed a early dialect of the SMB Protocol, they called the cifs protocol. Although not technical correct, now days both terms may be used for the same protocol (Linux cifs-utils).
Samba is a Linux program that implements the SMB protocol.
The best I determine Samba still uses netbios to convert a network computer name to an ip address, while Microsoft has depreciated netbios and no longer uses it in Microsoft's implementation of SMB. Netbios used ports 137 and 138 [3] and broadcast the network computer name and ip address over the LAN every 60 seconds [6].
In Windows 10, introduced SMB 3.1.1
To install Samba:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install samba
Add your shared folder to /etc/samba/smb.conf [2][3][4]:
[share]
path = /shared
valid users = user_name
read only = no
browseable = yes
guest ok = no
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
Change the permissions of the shared directory so everyone has read, write and execute privillages:
sudo chmod -R 777 shared
Then assign the user a smb password:
sudo smbpasswd -a user_name
Mount and unmount the share as you would a NAS. See mount_Synology_NAS.html.
For the above code 'share" is the SBM share and "shared" is the directory or folder that is shared.
The statement in your fstab will only contined the SBM share name:
//IP_address/share /mounting_point username=redacted,password=redacted, auto,user,vers=3.0,rw
When preforming a major version number update of OS, it is best pratice to start with a clean slate and many OS's require this.
Hence, before doing a clean OS update, you need to backup your shared folder or use a new host computer.
A problem that I ran into, was when I copied my backup shared folder, it did not perserve the modified dated on the files.
I should have used the -p option
To be able to transfer files from my iphone to my Linux Samba sever (Raspberry Pi), I had to add two lines to /etc/samba/smb.conf [9].
At the end of the [Global] block, add:
# needed for sharing with Mac, Iphone or Ipad
fruit:nfs_aces = no
At the end of the [share] block, add:
# needed for sharing with Mac, Iphone or Ipad
vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr
In leiu of mounting the share, you can install a samba client and access the share via the client. However, you are limited to what you can do via the client.
