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Samba is the open source solution to Windows Networking on the Linux Platform. This tutorial will walk you through adding Samba to your TrixBox 1.2.3 Asterisk server. Total installation time is about 2 minutes. Once installed, you can access your entire TrixBox server from any Windows or Mac system using Windows Networking.

Prerequisites

TrixBox 1.2.3 and a secured local area network are the only prerequisites for installing Samba. Because this implementation shares your entire TrixBox server with root-equivalent privileges and no password, make certain that you have a router and firewall in place which blocks incoming Windows Networking traffic from the Internet before you install this application. Also make certain that everyone on your LAN is a trusted user.

System Installation

Log into your TrixBox 1.2.3 system as root and issue the following commands to install Samba:

setup-samba
cd /etc/samba
nano -w smb.conf

If you've never changed the name of the workgroup on your Windows machines, you can skip this step. Just press Ctrl-X to close the editor. Otherwise, once the editor opens the Samba configuration file, move down to the line shown below and replace the second workgroup entry with the actual name of the Windows workgroup on your LAN.

workgroup = workgroup

Save the change to the configuration file by pressing Ctrl-X, then Y, then Enter.

Starting and Stopping Samba

By default, Samba now will automatically start each time your system is rebooted. To modify the startup behavior of Samba, issue one of the following commands after logging into your server as root:

chkconfig --level 345 smb on
chkconfig --level 345 smb off

To manually start or stop Samba, issue one of the following commands after logging into your server as root:

/etc/init.d/smb start
/etc/init.d/smb stop

Using Samba on Your LAN

Once Samba is running on your TrixBox system, you can access the entire disk on your TrixBox server from any Mac or Windows machine by browsing to your Windows Network workgroup and clicking on the trixbox PBX server. After connecting to the server, you can drag and drop files to and from your TrixBox system just as if it were another Windows machine.

Security Considerations

As configured, this implementation of Samba shares your entire TrixBox server with root-equivalent privileges and no password. It is worth repeating that you should make absolutely certain that you have a router and firewall in place which blocks incoming Windows Networking traffic from the Internet before you install this application. If you're using a wireless network, make certain that it, too, is secured with WPA, not WEP encryption. Otherwise, your entire TrixBox server is vulnerable to attack. Also make certain that everyone on your LAN is a trusted user. In short, this implementation is suitable for a home or home office and probably little else. You've been warned.