Create a public Samba share accessible without a login

Normally a Samba share will require login with a username and password, but sometimes you just want anyone on the network to access a specific share without needing to worry about that. Here's a quick and easy way of making a (fairly insecure) Samba share available to anyone on your local network.

Sections

  1. Prepare the user and share
  2. The configuration file
  3. References

Prepare the user and share

Create a new user for the share, and give it whatever password you want when prompted, it won’t be used to access the share anyway.

sudo adduser public

The folder /home/public will be automatically created, we’ll be using that as the public share. Let’s give everyone full read/write permissions:

sudo chmod -R ugo+rw /home/public

The configuration file

Use this minimal smb.conf:

[global]
   workgroup = WORKGROUP
   server string = Samba %v %h

# The below should make transfers faster and is optional
   strict allocate = Yes
   allocation roundup size = 4096
   read raw = Yes
   server signing = No
   write raw = Yes
   strict locking = No
   socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=131072 SO_SNDBUF=131072
   min receivefile size = 16384
   use sendfile = Yes
   aio read size = 16384
   aio write size = 16384

[public]
   comment = Public Samba Share
   path = /home/share
   browseable = yes
   writeable = yes
   read only = no
   public = yes
   guest only = yes
   force user = share
   force group = share
   force create mode = 0666
   force directory mode = 0777
Information

The parameters before [public] is optional, I found this blog post about it and I have definitely noticed it makes transfer speeds a little faster.

Next check that the syntax of the config file is valid:

testparm

If all is good, restart the Samba service for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl smbd nmbd

Now you should be able to access the share from a Windows PC on the same network without being prompted for a login.

Windows Run.