Installing SAMBA on the FOG Server
In this section we’ll setup samba on your fog server. This will give your WinPE environment access to the MS Windows images we stored in the /images/os/mswindows
directory. You could use a traditional MS Windows server for this function and skip the entire samba setup. That decision is up to you. I’m documenting the process of enabling CIFS (windows file share access) on your fog server to provide a consistent place to store your imaging files. In this setup the samba file shares will be share as read only
and can only be access by the user account we will setup in this post. SAMBA will not be connected to your AD. AD users will not be able to mount or access these shares. Your FOG server will be a standalone server with its own access control and users.
Centos 7 Instructions:
yum install samba samba-common samba-winbind
systemctl enable smb
systemctl enable winbind
systemctl enable nmb
# Create a linux user called fogpxeu we will use this account to connect to
# the server from our WinPE environment.
adduser --no-create-home --shell /sbin/nologin --user-group fogpxeu
# Assign a complex password since we will never use it we will use
# the samba password we will define below.
passwd fogpxeu
mv /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.old
We need to create our custom config file for samba. So use your favorite text editor and edit /etc/samba/smb.conf
. My favorite is vi
.
vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
Insert the following text into the smb.conf file.
[global]
workgroup = FOGPXE
server string = Fog Project Imaging
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
idmap config * : backend = tdb
cups options = raw
netbios name = fogpxeserver
map to guest = bad user
dns proxy = no
public = yes
nt acl support = no
security = user
guest account = nobody
[win7oem]
path = /images/os/mswindows/7Pro-x64
comment = Windows 7 OEM Installation DVD
valid users = "fogpxeu"
writeable = no
browseable = yes
read only = yes
[win10-1607]
path = /images/os/mswindows/10-1607
comment = Windows 10 1607 Installation DVD
valid users = "fogpxeu"
writeable = no
browseable = yes
read only = yes
Now lets start the samba services
systemctl restart smb
systemctl restart winbind
systemctl restart nmb
systemctl status smb
# Define the password here you will use to connect to the network
# share from the WinPE environment. Document this password,
# you will need it when you setup your WinPE boot image.
smbpasswd -a 'fogpxeu'
$ New SMB password:
$ Retype new SMB password:
$ Added user fogpxeu.
Ubuntu Instructions:
<Coming Soon>
Testing to setup:
Lets see if the shares are visible from a windows computer. On your favorite windows computer, open a command window and key in the net view command.
C:\Users\admin>net view \\192.168.1.55
Shared resources at \\192.168.1.55
Fog Project Imaging
Share name Type Used as Comment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
win10-1607 Disk Windows 10 1607 Installation DVD
win7oem Disk Windows 7 OEM Installation DVD
The command completed successfully.
Nice! we can see our shares. Now lets see if we can mount the network share. From the same command window used above key in the following.
C:\Users\admin>net use t: \\192.168.1.55\win10-1607 /user:fogpxeu
Enter the password for 'fogpxeu' to connect to '192.168.1.55':
The command completed successfully.
Double nice!! We are able to map the drive as the fogpxeu
user. Lets see if we can see any files on the share.
C:\Users\admin>dir t:
Volume in drive T is win10-1607
Volume Serial Number is B512-AE19
Directory of T:\
10/13/2017 01:50 PM <DIR> .
10/13/2017 09:35 PM <DIR> ..
10/13/2017 01:50 PM <DIR> boot
10/13/2017 01:51 PM <DIR> sources
10/13/2017 01:50 PM <DIR> efi
10/13/2017 01:48 PM 135 readme.txt
10/13/2017 01:50 PM 1,152,864 bootmgr.efi
10/13/2017 01:50 PM 395,268 bootmgr
3 File(s) 1,548,267 bytes
5 Dir(s) 34,709,315,584 bytes free
Great!! we can mount the share and can view the contents. The last bit is to disconnect from the share since our test was successful.
net use t: /delete