Security: Managing network shares remotely on Ubuntu?

I am about to setup a home network server running Ubuntu Server and I'm currently a bit worried about how to handle network shares and permissions in a good way.

After working a bit lately with Netgears ReadyNAS's units, I have become really spoiled with how easy it was to set up network shares and giving a specific user different levels of network access to a specific share (forbidden access, read, read/write).

How would I accomplish the same with my Ubuntu server through SSH?

Thanks a lot

Industrial

Posted 2011-01-11T22:10:23.647

Reputation: 196

Answers

Well you can definitely do this through SSH.

Have a look at the file smb.conf and the man page "man smb.conf". However, I get the impression you'd be more at home with a GUI.

Well, they are available as well. This link gives links to a number of gui's.

http://www.samba.org/samba/GUI/

SWAT or Webmin are ones I've played with some time. I can't recall which is better though. There might be some online demo's available.

Matt H

Posted 2011-01-11T22:10:23.647

Reputation: 3 823

I'd setup Samba and Webmin for remote and easy changes :)

I'd also just add that (if you are not forced to use ubuntu for any reason) Openfiler works great

Pitto

Posted 2011-01-11T22:10:23.647

Reputation: 1 766

The system-config-samba package is very easy to use.
See this detailed tutorial with screenshots :

How To Manage Samba Workgroup And Shares in Ubuntu Easily

harrymc

Posted 2011-01-11T22:10:23.647

Reputation: 306 093

Hi Harry. Thanks - that was a great link. However isnt Samba shares only for Windows network shares and not Linux native network shares(CIFS?)? – Industrial – 2011-01-18T09:38:06.743

1They work for both : Samba has both server and client packages, so Samba shares are universal. – harrymc – 2011-01-18T09:52:21.603

You might want to consider FreeNAS or Nexenta CE rather than Ubuntu, unless your goal is specifically to learn Linux. Both of those products are free and have nice GUIs for NAS management.

bdha

Posted 2011-01-11T22:10:23.647

Reputation:

I already know a fair share of Ubuntu and got some stuff that would be headache to run with FreeNAS (BSD) rather than Ubuntu unfortunately.. – Industrial – 2011-01-14T11:05:42.100