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Access Samba over the Web
Use CGI gateways to access your Linux shares using a simple Web browser
Thursday, February 10, 2005
You have some files on a Linux box, which you need to access while you're away. Common ways to get around this puzzle would be to set up FTP accounts for you, provide yourself Telnet or SSH access and so on. But what if you have a number of user accounts on this box-let's say it is some kind of a file server-and you need to do this for every user on that machine? After a while, the task gets quite tedious and can even result in security-related problems. The way out is to continue using Samba and perform simple file sharing. Well, file sharing is easy using Samba. Now let's see how to use it over the Web.
For this purpose, we assume you have either PCQLinux 2004 or Fedora Core 3 installed. Let's call this PC 'linux1'. If you haven't already, install and configure Samba on it. We have given the latest Samba (3.0.10.2) on this month's PCQXtreme CD. Login to your Linux box as root and copy 'samba.tar.gz' RPMs to /root. Now untar and install the four packages inside using:
# tar -xvf samba.tar.gz && rpm -ivh samba*.rpm
| Direct Hit! |
| Applies to: Linux administrators |
| USP:
Use the lightweight SMB2 to provide a CGI gateway between your Linux and Windows servers, and access your Samba shares |
| Links:
www.samba.org/samba/GUI |
| On PCQXtreme CD:
linux\smb2.tgz, linux\samba.tar.gz |
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Now configure Samba according to your set up. We have included a Web-based tool called 'swat' to configure Samba in this set (samba-swat-3.0.10-2.i386.rpm). It is installed by default on port 901 and you can launch it from Mozilla using http://localhost:901. Refer to Linux on a Windows Network, PCQuest, March 2003 on how to set this up.
SMB2
We have a package called 'smb2' to act as a CGI gateway for us. It is there on this month's PCQXtreme CD as well. Copy smb2.tgz (this is nothing but a '.tar.gz') to your /root directory and untar it. Now run:
# cd smb2
# make smb2
# cp smb2 /var/wwwroot/cgi-bin/
If you haven't enabled (or have disabled) CGI processing in Apache, head over to /etc/httpd/httpd.conf and enable it (add 'AllowCGI') to the default website.
From another machine
From another machine on your LAN, fire up its Web browser and access
| Error |
Cause |
Solution |
| Error
connecting to host |
The
computer you tried to access is either turned OFF or has its
file-sharing disabled. You can also get this error if you have a
firewall running. |
Try
rebooting the machine. If that doesn't work, check whether
file-sharing is enabled and running. Finally check whether a
firewall is blocking the SMB ports (139 and 445); it should
not. |
| Error
connecting to share |
The
shared folder is protected by a password. |
Can't
help it. SMB2 cannot currently connect to shares that are password
protected. |
| Access
is denied |
Either
too many users have connected to the SMB2 server or IP-address based
DENY policies are in effect. |
Reconfigure
Samba and SMB2 to allow more
users or grant the IP address access to your SMB2 box. |
|
http://linux1/cgi-bin/smb2/
And now you would be able to see all your network. Yes, it is that simple and without having to restart anything!
Sujay V. Sarma
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