how to create a samba share to the /home directory

Question

So i'm a developer, not a dev ops person so i'm out of my element. Thanks in advance for your patience.

I'm running windows 7 and set up a vmware player to run an ubuntu 12 virtual machine. I've installed samba so I can map a drive to the website that is running on the VM. Basically, I want to edit the files for the site on my windows machine while they live on the VM. Pretty straightforward.

Here's the problem. When I map my network drive, I can access \\local\brad (local being my server name) but not \local\www. Problem is, the files live in \www which is a sibling to \brad. so more clearly:

\home\brad\stuff-i-don't-care-about
\home\www\what-i-want-to-map-to

Can anyone explain why that is / offer possible solutions?

EDIT: As @Duke clarified below, What I really want is create a samba share for / or /home directories on my windows machine. Thanks for helping me state my goal better

don't be a tool and downvote without a comment. If you don't like my question at least be courteous enough to give me some constructive feedback along with the downvote...given that this is my second question EVER on this site. — Brad, Mar 02 '13 at 20:26

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 02 '13 at 23:40

0

Mounting something else than yout root partition to / is NOT a good idea, and probably won't even work.

But there is a workaround: chroot allows you to change the root a program sees, even makes it possible to "switch" to a completely different linux installation.

Ubuntu help page to the topic is available here

EDIT: Duke got me down the path on this. My problem was in the samba config file:

[bobby]
  path = /home/bobby
  available = yes
  valid users = bobby
  read only = no
  browsable = yes
  public = yes
  writable = yespath = /home/bobby

I needed to give my user access to the /home dir like so

[bobby]
  path = /home
  available = yes
  valid users = bobby
  read only = no
  browsable = yes
  public = yes
  writable = yespath = /home

Worked like a champ...Thanks @duke

edited Mar 02 '13 at 23:40

Brad

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answered Mar 02 '13 at 21:14

LordOfTheRats

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Oh I'm sorry, just noticed I got it the wrong way. – LordOfTheRats Mar 02 '13 at 21:17
its not a good idea even though its just a development box virtual machine? – Brad Mar 02 '13 at 22:58
I believe I missunderstood you the first time. What you really want is create a samba share for / or /home? – LordOfTheRats Mar 02 '13 at 23:02
yes...which ever of those two will let me work on the files in /home/www from my windows machine – Brad Mar 02 '13 at 23:09

how to create a samba share to the /home directory

1 Answers1