Public Samba Server

In some situations, it is valuable to have unauthenticated access to a Samba server, where the username and password supplied by the client is ignored.

To share (for example) /public_data on a Samba server first create an smb.conf with:

[global]
   map to guest = bad user

[public]
   path = /public_data
   guest ok = yes

To allow write access to the share change it to:

[public]
  path = /public_data
  guest ok = yes
  read only = no

Finally, ensure that the Samba guest account (typcially nobody) has the posix permissions to read and write (as appropriate) /data on your server's file system.

For example, you may wish to give world read access with:

chmod -R a+rX /public_data

To change the guest account, set:

[global]
 guest account = samba_guest
 map to guest = bad user

This configuration will still permit authentication - any user in your Samba password database (passdb.tdb, smbpasswd etc) can still authenticate, as long as the username is correct.

To test access to the share will work regardless of username specified by the client, run:

smbclient //server/public -Unot_a_user%foo
smb> ls
smb> get file

(where file is a file in /public_data)