SAMBA is very well known Opensource applications for file and printer sharing server in Unix and Linux. It supports the Server Message Block (SMB) and Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocols used by Microsoft operating systems.  So,  it is an effective application for sharing files between Linux and Windows computers in a Network. It can also be configured as many different deployment options such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server, Kerberos authentication server and Active Directory Servers (Windows Domain Controller).  Now, I will guide you to install and configure it in very easy way.

First, install SAMBA serve in your PC. Open terminal and type following command

sudo apt-get install samba smbfs

Now, you will have to configure it for file sharing and user access.

sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

here, you will have to edit several sections in this configuration file. Let start the first one. Find the following section

<blockquote>####### Authentication #######

# “security = user” is always a good idea. This will require a Unix account
# in this server for every user accessing the server. See
# /usr/share/doc/samba-doc/htmldocs/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/ServerType.html
# in the samba-doc package for details.
;  security = user

Then uncomment the security line, and add another line under that. Finally it will be like this:

security = user
username map = /etc/samba/smbusers

Now, you will have to create SAMBA user. Let, your username is testuser. So type this

sudo smbpasswd -a testuse

The smbpasswd application will then prompt you to enter a password for this user. if you get any failure  message, then add user in following way.

useradd -s /bin/true testuse

Next, add this username to the smbusers file. Open the smbusers file

sudo gedit /etc/samba/smbusers

add follwoing line

username = "testuse"

Save and close it. User is created. Now you will have to configuring it for file sharing. Again edit the conf file.

sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

Find the Share Definition section, make that like following

<blockquote>#======================= Share Definitions =======================

# Un-comment the following (and tweak the other settings below to suit)
# to enable the default home directory shares. This will share each
# user’s home directory as \\server\username
[share]
comment = Ubuntu File Server Share
path = /srv/samba/share
browsable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = no
writable = yes
create mask = 0755

Let me explain each values

Now the SAMBA server  is configured. Change the directory’s permissions.
[cc lang=”lang”]sudo mkdir -p /srv/samba/share
sudo chown nobody.nogroup /srv/samba/share/[/cc]
Finally, restart the samba services . .

sudo restart smbd
sudo restart nmbd 

Done.  Go to any windows PC, then start->run a and following line.
\\SAMBA server ip address\share

It will prompt for username and password. Enter the username: testuser and the password that your entered before. In Linux click on network. It will also prompt username and password. Now, whatever you will keep in /srv/samba/share directories, all Linux and windows computer will get access to those files.