Create a Samba file share (SMB server) to send and receive files

Samba works in a similar fashion as FTP but it is more robust and can be used as a file sharing and storage system. First I created a Linux Ubuntu virtual machine and installed Samba from the command line. I created a user named tester and added a password.

I next created a user and a directory to be shared (/home/tester/samba). I configured the etc/samba/smb.conf file as below with the samba path and users. This is also not a read only server so files can be uploaded.

Next I opened a connection locally from my macbook to the server. The server is at the IP of the VPS I created and samba is located at ('/').

Connecting from the mac in this way doesn't require the CLI. From here it is GUI based and is pretty straight forward. I just connect and then I can drag and drop files into my local samba folder which will write the contents to the web folder.

Here is a sample text file I created in Atom on my macbook that I will send to the server.

And here it is on my virtual machine in a text file I opened with nano. Overall SMB creates an easy an efficient way of transferring files from client machines to a main server or vise-a-versa.