Setup samba share from OS X terminal command line

Question

Having issues with my Mac's HDD. Disk Utility is unable to repair it. However, I can browse and read files from the OS X volume just fine. I have a Time Machine backup from a week ago, but I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket, so thought I'd do an additional backup of the data since it is still readable.

I can connect to my wifi network fine when booting from the Snow Leopard DVD. And I can write to my 16Gb USB fine. But my other computer is Win7, which means having to use FAT32 formatted USB, which means no large files.

Anyway, since I have a network connection, I'd like to just grab the data over the network.

So how do I setup a samba (i.e. Windows readable) network share from the Terminal in OS X Snow Leopard?

EDIT: Just to clarify - I want to create a samba share on the OS X computer, not mount a samba share from another computer.

Answer 1

SMB services are provided by smbd. smbd is configured by /etc/smb.conf. The configuration file uses an ini-style arrangement of [section] and key = value. You can get help on the syntax by man smb.conf. For example, to share / (the root directory) with a share name of "DYING", you would add the stanza:

[DYING]
path = /
read only = yes
guest ok = yes

The file will be reloaded by smbd on the minute. You can force a restart by sending SIGHUP to the daemon.

Answer 2

I was going to point you to this page describing how to set up samba shares on OS X, but you can set up samba shares through the System Preferences > Sharing panel.

Is it necessary to set it up through the Terminal? If not, this Apple Help document will do the trick.