This post is older than a year. Consider some information might not be accurate anymore.
We enable the Raspberry Pi as file server for Windows. To achieve that we need to install Samba. Samba allows windows clients to access the Raspberry Pis attached storage devices. All commands need root privileges, if you are working as user gain privileges by adding sudo before each command.
Install samba software
apt-get install samba samba-common-bin
The samba configuration can be found in /etc/samba/smb.conf.
This configuration should contain
workgroup = WORKGROUP
wins support = yes
At the bottom of the configuration file you add to your network share for Windows. Following example is a the share named Backup from which the Windows client can read and write.
[Backup]
comment = Backup Folder
path = /media/usbhdd/share
valid users = @users
force group = users
create mask = 0660
directory mask = 0771
read only = no
writeable = yes
browseable = yes
Some explanations
- path points to physical directory, the external usb hdd
- authenticated samba user must be in group users
- file permissions are in create and directory mask
- since it is a backup folder, writable is yes
As you have noticed, the Windows client has to authenticate to access the network share. The samba user is also the linux user. If the smb.conf has a password sync, it will also change the password of the user on the linux OS. To allow Windows to authenticate as user john, john has to be in group users. I assume the group users already exists.
Add the user john to group users
usermod -a -G users john
Set samba password for user john
smbpasswd -a john
Start samba
service samba start
After that you should be able to access the network share.
