Create samba share writeable by all, group, or only a user

This guide covers how to create a samba share, and set it writeable by all, or by a group, or specific users.

Create user (and optionally group) under which will share

With this method we actually create a user (in this example we will call it 'shareuser') and set the folder (to share) to be owned by this user.

useradd --system shareuser
chown -R shareuser /media/share

Note: the folder we are sharing is /media/share

Share by group

Optional: If you want to share by group (i.e. allow all users from group access) then you'll need to create this group. E.g. to add a group "sharegroup" and then make user "shareuser" part of said group, do:

sudo groupadd sharegroup
sudo useradd shareuser -G sharegroup

You can make set all new files to be created in a folder to be owned by a specific group using chmod. For example,

chgrp -R sharegroup /media/share
chmod g+s /media/share

will change all folders and files' ownership group in /media/share to sharegroup, and then apply the setgid bit to make any new files or folders created also have sharegroup group ownership.

Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf

We now need to edit /etc/samba/smb.conf. Below are several examples depending on how you want to users to access your smb share.

Allow all users to access and write to your samba share

...
# share
[share]
  path = /media/share
  writeable = yes
  browseable = yes
  public = yes
  create mask = 0644
  directory mask = 0755
  force user = shareuser
...

Only allow all users from a (Linux) group to access and write to your samba share

Note: you should have created group "sharegroup" (or another group) as outlined above.

...
# share
[share]
  path = /media/share
  valid users = @sharegroup
  writeable = yes
  browseable = yes
  create mask = 0644
  directory mask = 0755
  force user = shareuser
...

Only allow specific (samba) users to access and write to your samba share

For this, we'll need to create a samba password for the user you created previously. This samba password does not need to be the same as the Linux user password:

sudo smbpasswd -a shareuser

Follow the interative prompts to enter a samba password.

...
# share
[share]
  path = /media/share
  valid users = shareuser
  writeable = yes
  browseable = yes
  create mask = 0644
  directory mask = 0755
  force user = shareuser
...

Restart smbd

For your changes to take effect, we need to restart samba.

sudo systemctl restart smbd

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