[kwlug-disc] (Easy) Linux File Sharing?

[Adam Glauser]

My searching suggests that Samba is configured by default to use the
system user list as its user list, using the settings 'security=user'
and 'unix password sync = yes' in the smb.conf file. Apparently on
user creation the extra step of running `smbpasswd user password` is
required, but after that the 'passwd' command should update both
/etc/shadow and the Samba password file. I don't recall having to set
up separate Samba users on my network, but I typically use globally
accessible shares for convenience's sake.

It looks like you could get close to what you want using autofs to
mount shares (SMB, SSH or NFS) on the fly. Basically, you can set
things up so you can use a path like /mnt/smb/server/, and autofs will
automatically mount the share.

This howto[1] assumes a single password per Samba server, but I
*think* it should be possible to modify the example /etc/autofs.cifs
script to allow the user and password to be specified in the path:
$ cp localFile /mnt/smb/user at server:password/share/path

In the example script, you'd have to extract the 'server' string from
the $1 argument and store it in $key, as well as extracting the
username and path from the $1 argument (if they are supplied) and
using those instead of retrieving the defaults from $credfile.

I guess this sort of fails the 'easy' test, but at least the tricky
part is a one-shot deal when setting up a machine.

[1] http://www.howtoforge.com/accessing_windows_or_samba_shares_using_autofs