Sharing a folder on an Ubuntu Linux system using SMB

You can share a folder on an Ubuntu Linux system with Windows systems using Server Message Block (SMB) by installing Samba, a free and open-source software package. If Samba isn't installed, you can install it as a Debian package with the following commands:

You can verify that the Samba service is running with the command sudo systemctl status smbd; you should see "active (running)".

alice@Wonderland:~$ sudo systemctl status smbd
● smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/smbd.service; enabled; preset: ena>
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2026-09-12 17:09:53 EDT; 4min 16s ago
 Invocation: 4c72abe09deb445d91cb063be76afc0b
       Docs: man:smbd(8)
             man:samba(7)
             man:smb.conf(5)
   Main PID: 540371 (smbd)
     Status: "smbd: ready to serve connections..."
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 151234)
     Memory: 10M (peak: 11.1M)
        CPU: 161ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/smbd.service
             ├─540371 /usr/sbin/smbd --foreground --no-process-group
             ├─540388 "smbd: notifyd" .
             └─540389 "smbd: cleanupd "

Sep 12 17:09:52 Wonderland systemd[1]: Starting smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon...
Sep 12 17:09:53 Wonderland update-apparmor-samba-profile[540361]: grep: /etc/appa>
Sep 12 17:09:53 Wonderland update-apparmor-samba-profile[540367]: diff: /etc/appa>
Sep 12 17:09:53 Wonderland systemd[1]: Started smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon.
alice@Wonderland:~$

Once Samba is installed, you will need to edit the Samba configuration file, smb.conf, to define the shared folder. Follow these steps:

1. Configure the Samba Share

   Edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file with a text editor, such as nano, pico, or vi E.g. sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf. Add a section similar to the following to the end of the file.

   [MyShare]
      path = /path/to/your/folder
      available = yes
      guest ok = no
      valid users = your_username
      read only = no
      browsable = yes
   ;   public = yes
      writable = yes
   

   Replace /path/to/your/folder with the actual path of the directory you want to share and your_username with your Ubuntu username.

2. Set Directory Permissions

   Ensure that the directory you want to share is owned by the user you referenced in the "valid users" line above and the appropriate group name for that user, which you can see with a command like ls -l /path/to/your/folder. If it isn't, you can change the permissions with a command like sudo chown your_username:your_group /path/to/your/folder. replacing your_username:your_group with the relevant username and group.

3. Create the Samba User

   If you aren't using accounts in a Windows domain, add your Ubuntu username to the Samba database with a command like sudo smbpasswd -a your_username. If your Samba server is joined directly to an Active Directory domain (using Winbind or SSSd), you typically do not add domain users to a local Samba database manually. Instead, set security = ADS in the global section in /etc/samba/smb.conf so Samba authenticates accounts directly against the Active Directory Domain Controller.

   • sudo: Executes the command with root (administrator) privileges, which is required to modify system-level Samba configuration files and password databases.
   • smbpasswd: The tool used to manage Samba user passwords. Samba uses its own encrypted database to authenticate network file shares, separate from the standard Linux/Unix system password file.
   • -a: The "add" flag. It tells smbpasswd to add the specified user to the Samba database.
   • your_username: The name of the target user account on the Linux system. Important Note: The account specified by your_username must already exist as a local user on the system before running this command. Running this will prompt you to set a password specifically for accessing network shares via Samba (which can be the same as or different from the user's Linux login password). You can remove an account from the database with the -x option, i.e., sudo smbpasswd -x your_username.

   If you would like to see a list of the accounts in the Samba account database, you can use the command sudo pdbedit -L. You can see detailed information by adding the -v option, i.e., sudo pdbedit -L -v.

4. Restart the Samba Service

   Restart the Samba service to apply the the changes with sudo systemctl restart smbd.

   alice@Wonderland:~$ sudo systemctl restart smbd
   alice@Wonderland:~$ 
   

5. Firewall Configuration

   If you have the Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) running, you will need to allow the Samba network traffic through the firewall. You can do that with sudo ufw allow Samba.

Related:

1. Setting Up Samba on a Solaris 10 System
   Date: March 26, 2007