Set up Samba on OpenSuse with Podman Quadlets

Nov 19, 2023

20232023 Novcontainerslinux

I recently found myself needing to set up a samba server on an OpenSuse MicroOS server. Since MicroOS is immutable, installing the server natively isn't the best approach. Instead, I decided to try running samba in a container.

Fortunately, there is already a ready to use image on the opensuse container registry for samba. You can print the usage instructions with the following command:

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podman run --rm registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/samba:latest -h

Samba server container

The container will be configured as samba sharing server and it just needs:
 * host directories to be mounted,
 * users (one or more username:password tuples) provided,
 * shares defined (name, path).

Options:
 -s <name:path>[:browse:readonly:guest:users:admins:writelist:comment]
    Configure a share.
     * name             Required, name of the share
     * path             Required, exported path of the share
     * browse           Optional, if share is seen in a net view
     * readonly         Optional, if share is read-only or read-write
     * guest            Optional
     * users            Optional, comma separated list of valid users
     * admins           Optional, comma separated list of admin users
     * writelist        Optional, comma separated list of of users with write access
     * comment          Optional, '_' will be replaced with a space
 -u <name:password>[:UID:group:GID] 
    Create user with optional UID and group. This option is not recommended
    because the password will be visible by users listing the processes.
     * name             Required, username
     * password         Required, password of user
     * UID              Optional, UID of the user
     * group            Optional, users default group
     * GID              Optional, GID of the group
 -h 
    Display help text and exit

Environment variables:
  DEBUG=[0|1]           Enable debug mode
  TZ=<timezone>         Set timezone
  WORKGROUP=<name>      Specify name of workgroup, default is 'WORKGROUP'
  USER=<name:password>[:UID:group:GID]
  SHARE=<name:path>[:browse:readonly:guest:users:admins:writelist:comment]
  USER_FILE=<filename>  Specify file containing user entries to create
  SHARE_FILE=<filename> Specify file containing shares to export

Additional variables starting with the same name followed by a number are
supported for 'USER' and 'SHARE', e.g. SHARE, SHARE1, SHARE2, ...

USER_FILE and SHARE_FILE expect files which contain one line per entry in
the format of 'USER' and 'SHARE'.

Creating a Systemd service using Quadlet

Podman quadlet is an awesome way to create systemd services for your containers. It's kind of like an alternative to something like docker-compose, but systemd takes care of most of the details for actually creating/starting your containers. All you need to do is write a container definition file that tells systemd what to do.

Here's a quick example of how to use it to create a samba service:

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# /etc/containers/systemd/samba.container
[Unit]
Description=My Samba Server

[Install]
# Start by default on boot
WantedBy=multi-user.target default.target

[Service]
Restart=always

# Set to 15 minutes to avoid timeout while downloading the image for the first time
TimeoutStartSec=900

[Container]
Image=registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/samba:latest

# change this to point to your host data folder
Volume=/var/mydata:/mydata:z

PublishPort=139:139
PublishPort=445:445

# make sure to review these options (and at least change the user password)
Exec=-s "MyShare:/mydata:true:false:true:bob:bob:bob" -u "bob:goodpassword"

After customizing it, save the above to /etc/containers/systemd/samba.container then run:

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systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start samba

And that's it! Unless it failed, you should now have a running container called systemd-samba. Try rebooting the server and be amazed at how your samba server automatically starts up!

You can read more about quadlets here.

© Alejandro Ramallo 2024