adding an smb share in linux

Another post of something I do regularly but can't quite remember...

Running df gives the mount point:

> df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1              72G  4.7G   64G   7% /
tmpfs                 253M     0  253M   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                   10M  768K  9.3M   8% /dev
tmpfs                 253M     0  253M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1             917G   13G  859G   2% /mnt/raidk
/dev/sdb1             230G   11G  207G   5% /mnt/alfred

In this case it's /mnt/alfred I'd like to share.

Now to add the entry to /etc/samba/smb.conf:

> sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

I tend to copy an existing section of the config file and change the relevant parts. In this case, the new entry looks like:

[alfred]
path = /mnt/alfred
available = yes
browsable = yes
writable = yes
valid users = joeblo
admin users = joeblo

Once the changes are made, samba needs to be restarted:

> sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart
Stopping Samba daemons: nmbd smbd.
Starting Samba daemons: nmbd smbd.

Now that samba is restarted the new share is available on the network.