A Cockpit plugin for managing Samba and NFS shares.

• Manage global setings
  • Server description, workgroup, log level
  • Any other settings can be configured through the Advanced Settings dropdown
  • One-click advanced configuration global MacOS share optimization
• Manage shares
  • Create, edit, and remove shares
  • Manage allow-list of valid users and groups
  • One-click advanced configuration for Windows ACLs, shadow copy, MacOS share optimization, and audit logging
  • Create non-existing share path from UI
  • Manage Linux-side share path permissions
  • Ceph-specific options
    • Quota
    • Layout pool
    • Cephfs remount for properly reporting quota to client
  • Export and import of configuration (same format as /etc/samba/smb.conf)

User and group management was removed from cockpit-file-sharing in favour of managing Samba users through the new cockpit-identities plugin. Install that plugin to manage groups and Samba passwords.

• Create, edit, and remove shares
• Manage individual client settings
• Export and import of configuration (same format as /etc/exports)

Recommended: cockpit-identities for managing Samba password.

curl -sSL https://repo.45drives.com/setup | sudo bash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install cockpit-file-sharing

Installing this way may work for other versions of Ubuntu and Debian, but it is unsupported. You won't get automatic updates this way.

curl -LO https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing/releases/download/v4.2.6/cockpit-file-sharing_4.2.6-1focal_all.deb
sudo apt install ./cockpit-file-sharing_4.2.6-1focal_all.deb

curl -sSL https://repo.45drives.com/setup | sudo bash
sudo dnf install cockpit-file-sharing

Installing this way may work for other versions of Rocky/Centos/RHEL/Fedora/etc, but it is unsupported. You won't get automatic updates this way.

# dnf or yum
sudo dnf install https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing/releases/download/v4.2.6/cockpit-file-sharing-4.2.6-1.el8.noarch.rpm

1. Install Dependencies

# debian-like
cockpit-bridge
coreutils
attr
findutils
hostname
iproute2
libc-bin
systemd
nfs-kernel-server
samba-common-bin
# RHEL-like
cockpit-bridge
coreutils
attr
findutils
hostname
iproute
glibc-common
systemd
nfs-utils
samba-common-tools

2. Download pre-built archive and install

curl -LO https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing/releases/download/v4.2.6/cockpit-file-sharing_4.2.6_generic.zip
unzip cockpit-file-sharing_4.2.6_generic.zip
cd cockpit-file-sharing_4.2.6_generic
# no need to run `make` first, the plugin is pre-built
sudo make install

The Samba tab in cockpit-file-sharing is a front end UI for the net conf registry used by Samba. Any shares manually configured in /etc/samba/smb.conf won't show up in the UI, but they can be imported with the Import button at the bottom of the page. Your Samba configuration file must have include = registry in the [global] section, which can be automatically configured in one click in the UI.

Simply click the + in the top right of the shares list, fill out the required fields, and click Confirm.

• Share Name - Unique name for the share
• Share Description - Optional description for the share
• Path - The path to share out from the server
• Valid Users/Groups removed in v4 - valid users property still available through advanced settings.
  • Allow-lists for users and groups
  • By default, any user or group is allowed
• Guest Ok - Allow accessing share with no password, privileges mapped to guest account (default=nobody)
• Read Only - Disallow creation/modification of files/directories
• Browsable - Controls whether this share is seen in the list of available shares in a net view and in the browse list
• Inherit Permissions - New directories inherit the mode of the parent directory, including bits such as setgid. New files inherit their read/write bits from the parent directory.
• Windows ACLs - Administer share permissions from Windows, sets the following advanced settings

  map acl inherit = yes
  acl_xattr:ignore system acls = yes
  vfs objects = acl_xattr

• Shadow Copy - Expose per-file snapshots to users, sets the following advanced settings
  • ZFS:

    vfs objects = shadow_copy2
    shadow:snapdir = .zfs/snapshot
    shadow:sort = desc
    shadow:format = %Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S

  • Ceph:

    vfs objects = ceph_snapshots

• MacOS Share - Optimize share for MacOS, sets the following advanced settings

  vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr
  fruit:encoding = native
  fruit:metadata = stream
  fruit:zero_file_id = yes
  fruit:nfs_aces = no

• Audit Logs - Turn on audit logging, sets the following advanced settings

  vfs objects = full_audit
  full_audit:priority = notice
  full_audit:facility = local5
  full_audit:success = connect disconnect mkdir rmdir read write rename
  full_audit:failure = connect
  full_audit:prefix = %u|%I|%S

• Advanced Settings - Dropdown for configuring any other share parameters. See smb.conf(5) for a full list of parameters.

Click the pencil icon at the right side of the share list entry to edit the share. Settings are the same as creating a share, except you cannot change the share name or path.

Click the trash can icon at the right side of the share list entry, then click Yes in the confirmation prompt to delete the share. This only removes the share definition from Samba, it does not remove any files.

User and group management was removed from cockpit-file-sharing, in favour of implementing it in a separate plugin, cockpit-identities

This section was removed from cockpit-file-sharing.

To allow cockpit-file-sharing to manage existing shares defined in /etc/samba/smb.conf, click the Import configuration from /etc/samba/smb.conf button at the bottom of the page. It will confirm before overwriting your current share settings, and prompt to replace the content of /etc/samba/smb.conf with only include = registry in the [global] section, backing up the original content to /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak.~1~.

The NFS tab in cockpit-file-sharing is a graphical way of editing the contents of /etc/exports.d/cockpit-file-sharing.exports, which has the same syntax as /etc/exports.

Much like the Samba tab, simply click the + in the top right of the shares list to start adding an NFS export. The only settings are the path to the directory you want to share, and a list of clients consiting of a host and a comma-separated list of export options for that host. See exports(5) for options and machine name formats for the host field.

Click the pencil icon at the right side of the share list entry to edit the share. Settings are the same as creating a share.

Click the trash can icon at the right side of the share list entry, then click Yes in the confirmation prompt to delete the share. This only removes the share definition from Samba, it does not remove any files.

To allow cockpit-file-sharing to manage existing shares defined in /etc/exports, do the following (as root):

1. Create a backup copy of exports: cp /etc/exports /etc/exports.bak
2. Move exports to cockpit-file-sharing managed location: mv /etc/exports /etc/exports.d/cockpit-file-sharing.exports
3. Create an empty default exports file: touch /etc/exports