Running Samba from Docker

I run a lot of NAS VMs in my cluster. This is one ultralight NAS running in a small Docker VM.

What is Samba

“Samba is the standard Windows interoperability suite of programs for Linux and Unix.

Samba is Free Software licensed under the GNU General Public License, the Samba project is a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy.

Since 1992, Samba has provided secure, stable and fast file and print services for all clients using the SMB/CIFS protocol, such as all versions of DOS and Windows, OS/2, Linux and many others.

Samba is an important component to seamlessly integrate Linux/Unix Servers and Desktops into Active Directory environments. It can function both as a domain controller or as a regular domain member.” — samba.org

“Don't let the success of others discourage you. Let it inspire you.” - unknown

Installation

I use Dockge as my tool to deploy and manage Docker Compose files. Use a small VM 1 core, RAM 1 GiB, 8Gib Disk, and add a data disk of a proper size e.g., 256 GiB on a ZFS-2 device. You should install avahi on this VM.

Add the storage for the synchronized files

Add a virtual disk (sdb) and create a partition on it. Make a filesystem mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 and mount it with sudo mount -t auto -v /dev/sdb1 /sync/.

Find the UUID ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid and edit /etc/fstab, add the line /dev/disk/by-uuid/<UUID> /sync ext4 defaults 0 2. The fs_passno of 2 means check filesystem after the root filesystem is checked, for no check use 0.

The root filesystem should be specified with a fs_passno of 1. Other filesystems should have a fs_passno of 2. Filesystems within a drive will be checked sequentially, but filesystems on different drives will be checked at the same time to utilize parallelism available in the hardware. Defaults to zero (don’t check the filesystem) if not present.

Samba configuration

This is the included default

[global]
        security = user
        server min protocol = SMB2

        # disable printing services
        load printers = no
        printing = bsd
        printcap name = /dev/null
        disable spoolss = yes

[Data]
        path = /storage
        comment = Shared
        valid users = @smb
        browseable = yes
        writable = yes
        read only = no
        force user = root
        force group = root

If you need more advanced features, like multiple shares, you can modify the smb.conf file in this repo, and bind mount it to the container like this:

volumes:
  - /example/smb.conf:/etc/samba/smb.conf

Dockge files

services:
  samba:
    image: dockurr/samba
    container_name: samba
    environment:
      - USER
      - PASS
    ports:
      - 445:445
    volumes:
      - /srv/smb:/storage
    restart: unless-stopped #on-failure
networks: {}

USER: username
PASS: L0ngAndC0mplicatedPa$$w0rd

References

Samba ^[1]