Tribblix: manual page: samba.8

SAMBA(8) System Administration tools SAMBA(8)

NAME

samba - Server to provide AD and SMB/CIFS services to clients

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

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

samba is the server daemon that provides Active Directory,
filesharing and printing services to clients. The server provides
filespace and directory services to clients using the SMB (or CIFS)
protocol and other related protocols such as DCE/RPC, LDAP and
Kerberos.

Clients supported include MSCLIENT 3.0 for DOS, Windows for
Workgroups, Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000/XP/2003, OS/2,
DAVE for Macintosh, and cifsfs for Linux.

An extensive description of the services that the server can provide
is given in the man page for the configuration file controlling the
attributes of those services (see smb.conf(5). This man page will not
describe the services, but will concentrate on the administrative
aspects of running the server.

Please note that there are significant security implications to
running this server, and the smb.conf(5) manual page should be
regarded as mandatory reading before proceeding with installation.

OPTIONS

-D|--daemon
If specified, this parameter causes the server to operate as a
daemon. That is, it detaches itself and runs in the background,
fielding requests on the appropriate ports. Operating the server
as a daemon is the recommended way of running samba for servers
that provide more than casual use file and print services. This
switch is assumed if samba is executed on the command line of a
shell.

-F|--foreground
If specified, this parameter causes the samba process to not
daemonize, i.e. double-fork and disassociate with the terminal.

-i|--interactive
If this parameter is specified it causes the server to run
"interactively", not as a daemon, even if the server is executed
on the command line of a shell. Setting this parameter negates
the implicit daemon mode when run from the command line. samba
also logs to standard output, as if the -S parameter had been
given.

-M|--model
This parameter can be used to specify the "process model" samba
should use. This determines how concurrent clients are handled.
Available process models include:

+o single

All Samba services run in a single process. This is
not recommended for production configurations.

+o standard

A process is created for each Samba service, and for
those services that support it (currently only LDAP
and NETLOGON) a new processes is started for each new
client connection.

Historically, this was the 'standard' way Samba
behaved up until v4.10. Note that this model can be
resource intensive if you have a large number of
client connections.

+o prefork

The default. A process is started for each Samba
service, and a fixed number of worker processes are
started for those services that support it (currently
LDAP, NETLOGON, and KDC). The client connections are
then shared amongst the worker processes. Requests for
services not supporting prefork are handled by a
single process for that service.

The number of prefork worker processes started is
controlled by the smb.conf(5) parameter prefork
children, which defaults to 4.

--maximum-runtime=seconds
Set maximum runtime of the server process till autotermination in
seconds.

-b|--show-build
Print information about how Samba was built.

-d|--debuglevel=DEBUGLEVEL, --debug-stdout
level is an integer from 0 to 10. The default value if this
parameter is not specified is 0.

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. This will
redirect debug output to STDOUT. By default server daemons are
logging to a log file.

--configfile=CONFIGFILE
The file specified contains the configuration details required by
the server. The information in this file includes server-specific
information such as what printcap file to use, as well as
descriptions of all the services that the server is to provide.
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.

-l|--log-basename=logdirectory
Base directory name for log/debug files. The extension
".progname" will be appended (e.g. log.smbclient, log.smbd,
etc...). The log file is never removed by the client.

--leak-report
Enable talloc leak reporting on exit.

--leak-report-full
Enable full talloc leak reporting on exit.

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

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

--usage
Display brief usage message.

FILES

/etc/rc
or whatever initialization script your system uses.

If running the server as a daemon at startup, this file will need
to contain an appropriate startup sequence for the server.

/etc/services
If running the server via the meta-daemon inetd, this file must
contain a mapping of service name (e.g., netbios-ssn) to service
port (e.g., 139) and protocol type (e.g., tcp).

/usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf
This is the default location of the smb.conf(5) server
configuration file. Other common places that systems install this
file are /usr/samba/lib/smb.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf.

This file describes all the services the server is to make
available to clients. See smb.conf(5) for more information.

DIAGNOSTICS

Most diagnostics issued by the server are logged in a specified log
file. The log file name is specified at compile time, but may be
overridden on the command line.

The number and nature of diagnostics available depends on the debug
level used by the server. If you have problems, set the debug level
to 3 and peruse the log files.

Most messages are reasonably self-explanatory. Unfortunately, at the
time this man page was created, there are too many diagnostics
available in the source code to warrant describing each and every
diagnostic. At this stage your best bet is still to grep the source
code and inspect the conditions that gave rise to the diagnostics you
are seeing.

VERSION

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

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 SAMBA(8)