Samba Server allows you to share the home directories of users automatically. This is useful so that you don’t have to manually setup the share for every user.

Here is my setup in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. First, to set the samba password for the user,

$ sudo smbpasswd -a username

$ sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

find the Share Definitions section and change the parameters as following,

#======================= Share Definitions =======================

[homes]

comment = Home Directories

browseable = yes

read only = no

valid users = %S

$ sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

This will share each user’s home directory as \\localserver\username.

Sharing files between your Ubuntu and Windows computers, Samba file sharing is the best option and it is free software too. There are many advantages of sharing files in a local LAN network. For instance, it is great to be able to access the music and movies on the server from any machines in the LAN.

Here is my setup for Samba in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. First,

$ sudo apt-get install samba

for finishing the installation.

Now, create a share folder to be accessible to guest users at /srv/samba/share for example,

$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/samba/share

$ sudo chown nobody.nogroup /srv/samba/share

$ sudo chmod 777 /srv/samba/share

After create the share directory, open and edit /etc/samba/smb.conf as follows;

$ sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

uncomment

#security = user

then add the following,

[share]
comment = ubuntu file server guest access share
path = /srv/samba/share
browsable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
create mask = 0755

$ sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

Now, guest can access the share in LAN.

vsftpd is a GPL licensed FTP server and the default FTP server in some Linux distributions. It is secure and extremely fast. It is stable.

$sudo apt-get install vsftpd

This will complete the installation.

I have made the modification of vsftpd configuration file as follows;

$sudo gedit /etc/vsftpd.conf

change [anonymous_enable=YES] to [anonymous_enable=NO]

uncomment

#local_enable=YES

#write_enable=YES

then,

$sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

That’s all.

Access my Ubuntu Server remotely in secure manner for some maintenances by installing SSH server. OpenSSH is a FREE version of the SSH connectivity tools that technical users of the Internet rely on. Users of telnet, rlogin, and ftp may not realize that their password is transmitted across the Internet unencrypted, but it is. OpenSSH encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. Additionally, OpenSSH provides secure tunneling capabilities and several authentication methods, and supports all SSH protocol versions.

$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server

This will complete the installation. You can also install the openssh-client to your remote PC as well.

$sudo apt-get install openssh-client

Now,

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start

to start(or restart) the service.

Note: Copy Files Securely over network using SCP

Usage: scp [[user@]host1:]file1 … [[user@]host2:]file2

To copy a file to a remote machine use the following command,

scp /path/file user@remotehost:/path/destination

If you need to copy from the remote host to the local host,

scp user@remotehost:/path/file /path/to/destination

if you need to copy an entire directory full of files to a remote location, use the -r argument

scp -r /path/directory/ user@remotehost:/path/destination/

When I have Ubuntu 9.10(Karmic) running on my desktop, I like to have a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) server up and ready to go in my local network. This makes an environment for testing and experimentation. So I have LAMP server and GUI for the server at same time. You can also install the Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition with LAMP first and then install the GUI as well. To install LAMP server, opne a terminal,

$ sudo tasksel

Here, I selected the server options as LAMP for installation. At the time of installation it will prompt for mysql server root password,  enter the root password and select continue to finish the installation.

But to setup a home server only using command-line interface this time, I used the Ubuntu 9.10(karmic Koala) Server Edition and setup LAMP during the installation at same time without any problem.

Using phpinfo to check the version information etc about the server after installation. First, create a info.php file at /var/www/info.php as following,

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

In a browser(another PC on the local LAN) enter http://LocalserverAddress/info.php, outputs a large amount of information about the current state of PHP. This includes information about PHP compilation options and extensions, the PHP version, server information and environment (if compiled as a module), the PHP environment, OS version information, paths, master and local values of configuration options, HTTP headers, and the PHP License.

phpinfo : Outputs lots of PHP information – reference from php.net