TESTPARM(1) User Commands TESTPARM(1)

NAME

testparm - check an smb.conf configuration file for internal
correctness

SYNOPSIS

testparm [-s|--suppress-prompt] [-v|--verbose] [-?|--help] [--usage]
[-d|--debuglevel=DEBUGLEVEL] [--debug-stdout] {config filename}
[hostname hostIP]

DESCRIPTION

This tool is part of the samba(7) suite.

testparm is a very simple test program to check an smbd(8)
configuration file for internal correctness. If this program reports
no problems, you can use the configuration file with confidence that
smbd will successfully load the configuration file.

Note that this is NOT a guarantee that the services specified in the
configuration file will be available or will operate as expected.

If the optional host name and host IP address are specified on the
command line, this test program will run through the service entries
reporting whether the specified host has access to each service.

If testparm finds an error in the smb.conf file it returns an exit
code of 1 to the calling program, else it returns an exit code of 0.
This allows shell scripts to test the output from testparm.

OPTIONS

-s|--suppress-prompt
Without this option, testparm will prompt for a carriage return
after printing the service names and before dumping the service
definitions.

-v|--verbose
If this option is specified, testparm will also output all
options that were not used in smb.conf(5) and are thus set to
their defaults.

--parameter-name parametername
Dumps the named parameter. If no section-name is set the view is
limited by default to the global section. It is also possible to
dump a parametrical option. Therefore the option has to be
separated by a colon from the parametername.

--section-name sectionname
Dumps the named section.

--show-all-parameters
Show the parameters, type, possible values.

-l|--skip-logic-checks
Skip the global checks.

-?|--help
Print a summary of command line options.

--usage
Display brief usage message.

-d|--debuglevel=DEBUGLEVEL
level is an integer from 0 to 10. The default value if this
parameter is not specified is 1 for client applications.

The higher this value, the more detail will be logged to the log
files about the activities of the server. At level 0, only
critical errors and serious warnings will be logged. Level 1 is a
reasonable level for day-to-day running - it generates a small
amount of information about operations carried out.

Levels above 1 will generate considerable amounts of log data,
and should only be used when investigating a problem. Levels
above 3 are designed for use only by developers and generate HUGE
amounts of log data, most of which is extremely cryptic.

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the log
level parameter in the ${prefix}/etc/smb.conf file.

--debug-stdout
This will redirect debug output to STDOUT. By default all clients
are logging to STDERR.

--configfile=<configuration file>
The file specified contains the configuration details required by
the client. The information in this file can be general for
client and server or only provide client specific like options
such as client smb encrypt. See ${prefix}/etc/smb.conf for more
information. The default configuration file name is determined at
compile time.

--option=<name>=<value>
Set the smb.conf(5) option "<name>" to value "<value>" from the
command line. This overrides compiled-in defaults and options
read from the configuration file. If a name or a value includes a
space, wrap whole --option=name=value into quotes.

-V|--version
Prints the program version number.

configfilename
This is the name of the configuration file to check. If this
parameter is not present then the default smb.conf(5) file will
be checked.

hostname
If this parameter and the following are specified, then testparm
will examine the hosts allow and hosts deny parameters in the
smb.conf(5) file to determine if the hostname with this IP
address would be allowed access to the smbd server. If this
parameter is supplied, the hostIP parameter must also be
supplied.

hostIP
This is the IP address of the host specified in the previous
parameter. This address must be supplied if the hostname
parameter is supplied.

FILES

smb.conf(5)
This is usually the name of the configuration file used by
smbd(8).

DIAGNOSTICS

The program will issue a message saying whether the configuration
file loaded OK or not. This message may be preceded by errors and
warnings if the file did not load. If the file was loaded OK, the
program then dumps all known service details to stdout.

For certain use cases, SMB protocol requires use of cryptographic
algorithms which are known to be weak and already broken. DES and
ARCFOUR (RC4) ciphers and the SHA1 and MD5 hash algorithms are
considered weak but they are required for backward compatibility. The
testparm utility shows whether the Samba tools will fall back to
these weak crypto algorithms if it is not possible to use strong
cryptography by default. In FIPS mode weak crypto cannot be enabled.

VERSION

This man page is part of version 4.18.11 of the Samba suite.

SEE ALSO

smb.conf(5), smbd(8)

AUTHOR

The original Samba software and related utilities were created by
Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open
Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.

Samba 4.18.11 03/13/2024 TESTPARM(1)