Samba
This guide will help you on how to use samba on nixos.
Samba Client
cifs mount
The following snippets shows how to mount a CIFS (Windows) share in NixOS.
Replace all <FIELDS> with concrete values:
{
fileSystems."/mnt/share" = {
device = "//<IP_OR_HOST>/path/to/share";
fsType = "cifs";
options = let
# this line prevents hanging on network split
automount_opts = "x-systemd.automount,noauto,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60,x-systemd.device-timeout=5s,x-systemd.mount-timeout=5s";
in ["${automount_opts},credentials=/etc/nixos/smb-secrets"];
};
}
Also create /etc/nixos/smb-secrets with the following content (domain= can be optional)
username=<USERNAME>
domain=<DOMAIN>
password=<PASSWORD>
Firewall
Samba discovery of machines and shares may need the firewall to be tuned (source):
in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix, add:
networking.firewall.extraCommands = ''iptables -t raw -A OUTPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 137 -j CT --helper netbios-ns'';
Many GTK-based file managers like Nautilus, Thunar, and PCManFM can browse samba shares thanks to GVFS. GVFS is a dbus daemon which must be running for this to work. If you use Gnome, you have nothing to do as the module already enables it for you, but in less full-featured desktop environments, some further configuration options are needed.
The generic way of enabling GVFS is to add this in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix:
services.gvfs.enable = true;
There are however some special cases.
XFCE
Xfce comes with a slimmed-down version of GVFS by default which comes with samba support compiled out. To have smb:// support in Thunar, we will use GNOME's full-featured version of GVFS:
services.gvfs = {
enable = true;
package = lib.mkForce pkgs.gnome3.gvfs;
};
No desktop environment
GVFS relies on polkit to gain privileges for some operations. Polkit needs an authentication agent to ask for credentials. Desktop environments usually provide one but if you have no desktop environment, you may have to install one yourself:
Excerpt of /etc/nixos/configuration.nix:
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ lxqt.lxqt-policykit ]; # provides a default authentification client for policykit
DBUS
Furthermore, if you happen to start your Window Manager directly, via .xinitrc, or directly invoke a Wayland compositor such as Sway, you should ensure that you launch dbus at startup in your session and export its environment. If you do not have a dbus session in your environment, you will see errors such as "Operation not supported" when attempting to browse the network.
For example, if you are using .xinitrc, you could invoke dbus-launch:
export `dbus-launch` # starts dbus and exports its address
exec xterm # your prefered Window Manager
(You need to restart your Window Manager to have the changes in .xinitrc to take place.)
If you are using a Wayland compositor like Sway, you can run it under dbus-run-session for the same effect:
dbus-run-session sway
(Because dbus-run-session exits when the child process exits, it is only appropriate to use dbus-run-session with a process that will be running during the entire session. This is the case for Wayland compositors, but is not necessarily true for all configurations of X11 window managers.)
Samba Server
excerpt of /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.samba = {
enable = true;
securityType = "user";
extraConfig = ''
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = smbnix
netbios name = smbnix
security = user
#use sendfile = yes
#max protocol = smb2
hosts allow = 192.168.0 localhost
hosts deny = 0.0.0.0/0
guest account = nobody
map to guest = bad user
'';
shares = {
public = {
path = "/mnt/Shares/Public";
browseable = "yes";
"read only" = "no";
"guest ok" = "yes";
"create mask" = "0644";
"directory mask" = "0755";
"force user" = "username";
"force group" = "groupname";
};
private = {
path = "/mnt/Shares/Private";
browseable = "yes";
"read only" = "no";
"guest ok" = "no";
"create mask" = "0644";
"directory mask" = "0755";
"force user" = "username";
"force group" = "groupname";
};
};
};
If your firewall is enabled, or if you consider enabling it:
networking.firewall.enable = true;
networking.firewall.allowPing = true;
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ 445 139 ];
networking.firewall.allowedUDPPorts = [ 137 138 ];
 |
Tip
In order to affect your NixOS system by your nix-language-specific changes you must first evaluate it:
$ nixos-rebuild switch --use-remote-sudo |
Samba should startup afterwards.
If you plan to access a share as a user on the server, you'll need to run smbpasswd -a <user> as root to set the password.
stopping/restarting the services
# systemctl stop samba
# systemctl start samba
# systemctl restart samba
Use Cases
Apple Time Machine
Example configuration:
services.samba = {
shares = {
tm_share = {
path = "/mnt/Shares/tm_share";
"valid users" = "username";
public = "no";
writeable = "yes";
"force user" = "username";
"fruit:aapl" = "yes";
"fruit:time machine" = "yes";
"vfs objects" = "catia fruit streams_xattr";
};
};
}
Printer sharing
The `samba` packages comes without cups support compiled in, however `sambaFull` features printer sharing support. To use it set the `services.samba.package` option:
services.samba.package = pkgs.sambaFull;
A printer share that allows all members in the local network printing could look like this:
{ pkgs, ... }: {
services.samba = {
enable = true;
package = pkgs.sambaFull;
extraConfig = ''
load printers = yes
printing = cups
printcap name = cups
'';
shares = {
printers = {
comment = "All Printers";
path = "/var/spool/samba";
public = "yes";
browseable = "yes";
# to allow user 'guest account' to print.
"guest ok" = "yes";
writable = "no";
printable = "yes";
"create mode" = 0700;
};
};
systemd.tmpfiles.rules = [
"d /var/spool/samba 1777 root root -"
];
}
Troubleshooting
Stale file handle
Trying to read the contents of a remote file leads to the following error message: "Stale file handle". If you have mounted a share via the method described in "cfis mount", adding the option noserverino might fix this problem. [1]