Sams Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours		ContentsIndex
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Miscellaneous

map to guest
root directory

The last two parameters I'll present relate to security but do not fit into any of the subjects I've discussed so far.

map to guest

Without getting in over your heads in details, the map to guest parameter enables you to determine what Samba does when a session setup request contains invalid user authentication information (for example, the client sent a bad password). There are three possible responses:

• Never  Samba rejects sessions with an invalid password. This is the default behavior.



• Bad User  If the client sends an invalid password, the session is rejected unless the username is invalid. In this case, the connection is accepted and the user is mapped to the guest account specified in smb.conf.



• Bad Password  This setting causes any invalid username/password pairs to be accepted as guest connections. However, the connecting user is not told this and might complain about being unable to access their files because they are connected as the guest account.

I would recommend that you leave the default settings unless you have a legitimate reason for changing them. If you cannot think of a legitimate reason on your own, that's probably a good rationale to leave it alone.

root directory

This is another parameter that is not commonly used. It instructs Samba to perform a chroot() to the specified directory similar to the way that anonymous FTP connections do. This is not strictly necessary, because Samba denies access to files outside the share by default. It does, however, add an extra level of security, but you must make sure that all necessary scripts, system files, and binaries are contained below the root directory. To override the default root directory of /, you can simply specify the directory of your choice:

root directory = /export/smb
root directory = /export/smb

Sams Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours		ContentsIndex
Hour 6: Security Levels and Passwords		Previous HourNext Hour
Sections in this Chapter: Security Levels and the security Parameter Final Comments Usernames and Passwords Summary Accessibility Q&A Miscellaneous New Terms		Previous SectionNext Section

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