We decided to go open source and used SAMBA as our file server as Samba lets you share files with different client OS’s over a network – e.g. windows 7 / Mac OS / Linux. Samba let’s you manage:

1. File & print services

2. Authentication and Authorization

3. Name resolution

After installing Ubuntu on our new server I configured SAMBA to share files on the network. Being fairly new to Linux it took a little while to setup but I was having a major problem getting the other Window’s clients working on the Samba share. The problem was every time I tried to access folders in the SAMBA share from a windows machine, I would get the error message “Windows cannot access “insert samba share name here – you do not have permission to access “samba share”. Contact your network administrator to request access.”

This problem is on all of google and the Ubuntu forums, It is to do with the permissions on the folders in the samba share, the solution:

• Right click on the folder -> properties -> permissions
• under group and folder access this had defaulted to none
• change to create and delete files and apply permissions to enclosed files

Make sure this is done for each user / group on setup. I’m sure there are better ways of doing it, so let me know!

If you build a server on the Dell website, it gets very expensive as software and licences / User CAL’s get added. In an attempt to lower the cost of a new server, and after looking at Windows Server 2008 options, we decided to go with Ubuntu 10.04. Coming soon – a guide to setup Samba and a look at different options for servers vs cloud based for small business. Is there a need for in house servers with expensive software, or hosting databases in the cloud via Microsoft azure, or emailing, scheduling via google apps, project management via basecamp etc…

Introduction to Samba