Linux Network Folder¶

Installing Samba¶

1. Install Samba if you have not already…

   Note

   You can check if Samba is already running with: sudo systemctl status smbd

   Debian-basedArchCentOS/RedhatFedora

   1. For Ubuntu, Mint, Pop-OS, PureOS, etc

      sudo apt install samba && sudo systemctl enable smbd && sudo systemctl start smbd
      

2. Add your user to Samba, replacing $USER with your Linux username.

   sudo smbpasswd -a $USER
   

   First you will be prompted for your Linux password, then you will be asked to create a new SMB password for the user with permission to write to your new backup share. It can be the same password, or it can be different. Keep it somewhere safe, such as Vaultwarden.

3. Add your user to sambashare group, necessary on some systems.

   sudo usermod -a -G sambashare $USER
   

   Again, replacing $USER and entering your Linux password when prompted, not your new SMB password.

4. In case your system is running a firewall by default or due to your own custom configuration, enter these commands to allow connections to Samba. If it generates an error, you can safely ignore it:

   Debian-basedRedHat-based

   sudo ufw allow Samba
   

5. Create a directory to share or choose an existing one and make note of its location (path). For this example, we will call the share backup-share and its corresponding shared directory will be located at /home/$USER/start9-backup. Replace $USER with your Linux username below.

   mkdir -p /home/$USER/start9-backup
   

   Note

   If you are on Fedora 38+, you need to do an extra step to allow the Samba share in SELinux:

   sudo semanage fcontext --add --type "samba_share_t" "/home/$USER/start9-backup(/.*)?"
   sudo restorecon -R /home/$USER/start9-backup
   

6. Configure Samba by adding the following to the end of the /etc/samba/smb.conf file:

   1. First open the file…

   sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
   

   2. Then add…

   [backup-share]
       path = "/home/$USER/start9-backup"
       create mask = 0600
       directory mask = 0700
       read only = no
       guest ok = no
   

   • [backup-share] in brackets is the Share Name and can be called anything you’d like. We used backup-share in this example.

   • path should be the path to the directory you created earlier.

   3. Save/write the file and then exit.

   4. Test the config file with…

   testparm
   

   Look for “Loaded services file OK”. You don’t need to do anything else here.

Connect StartOS¶

1. Go to System > Create Backup.

   

2. Click “Open”.

   

3. Fill in the following fields:

   • Hostname - This is the hostname of the machine that your shared folder is located on, you can get this with hostname or hostnamectl

   • Path - This is the “Share Name” (name of the share in your samba config) and not the full directory path. In this guide we use backup-share.

   • Username - This is your Linux username on the remote machine that you used to create the shared directory

   • Password - This is the password you set above using smbpasswd

   

4. Click “Save”.

That’s it! You can now Create encrypted, private backups of all your StartOS data to your Linux machine or external drive!!