Chapter 32. SWAT - The Samba Web Administration Tool

John H. Terpstra

Samba Team

<jht@samba.org>

April 21, 2003

Table of Contents

Features and Benefits

Enabling SWAT for use
Securing SWAT through SSL
The SWAT Home Page
Global Settings
Share Settings
Printers Settings
The SWAT Wizard
The Status Page
The View Page
The Password Change Page

There are many and varied opinions regarding the usefulness or otherwise of SWAT. No matter how hard one tries to produce the perfect configuration tool it remains an object of personal taste. SWAT is a tool that will allow web based configuration @@ -7,7 +6,7 @@ of samba. It has a wizard that may help to get samba configured quickly, it has sensitive help on each smb.conf parameter, it provides for monitoring of current state of connection information, and it allows network wide MS Windows network password management. -

Features and Benefits

There are network administrators who believe that it is a good idea to write systems documentation inside configuration files, for them SWAT will aways be a nasty tool. SWAT does not store the configuration file in any intermediate form, rather, it stores only the @@ -19,7 +18,7 @@ internal ordering. So before using SWAT please be warned - SWAT will completely replace your smb.conf with a fully optimised file that has been stripped of all comments you might have placed there and only non-default settings will be written to the file. -

Enabling SWAT for use

SWAT should be installed to run via the network super daemon. Depending on which system your Unix/Linux system has you will have either an inetd or xinetd based system. @@ -35,8 +34,8 @@ The control entry for the older style file might be: swat stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/sbin/swat swat

A control file for the newer style xinetd could be: -

+

+
 	# default: off
 	# description: SWAT is the Samba Web Admin Tool. Use swat \
 	#              to configure your Samba server. To use SWAT, \
@@ -52,9 +51,9 @@ A control file for the newer style xinetd could be:
 		log_on_failure  += USERID
 		disable = yes
 	}
-

+

Both the above examples assume that the swat binary has been located in the /usr/sbin directory. In addition to the above SWAT will use a directory access point from which it will load it's help files @@ -73,48 +72,48 @@ So long as you log onto SWAT as the user rootHOME, GLOBALS, SHARES, PRINTERS, WIZARD, STATUS, VIEW, PASSWORD. -

Securing SWAT through SSL

Lots of people have asked about how to setup SWAT with SSL to allow for secure remote administration of Samba. Here is a method that works, courtesy of Markus Krieger

Modifications to the swat setup are as following:

install OpenSSL -
+

generate certificate and private key -

 root# /usr/bin/openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -config \
  	/usr/share/doc/packages/stunnel/stunnel.cnf \
 	-out /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem -keyout /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem

remove swat-entry from [x]inetd -
+

start stunnel -

 root# stunnel -p /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem -d 901 \
 	 -l /usr/local/samba/bin/swat swat

-afterwards simply contact to swat by using the URL https://myhost:901, accept the certificate +afterwords simply contact to swat by using the URL https://myhost:901, accept the certificate and the SSL connection is up. -

The SWAT Home Page

The SWAT title page provides access to the latest Samba documentation. The manual page for each samba component is accessible from this page as are the Samba-HOWTO-Collection (this document) as well as the O'Reilly book "Using Samba".

Administrators who wish to validate their samba configuration may obtain useful information -from the man pages for the diganostic utilities. These are available from the SWAT home page +from the man pages for the diagnostic utilities. These are available from the SWAT home page also. One diagnostic tool that is NOT mentioned on this page, but that is particularly useful is ethereal, available from http://www.ethereal.com.

Warning

SWAT can be configured to run in demo mode. This is NOT recommended as it runs SWAT without authentication and with full administrative ability. ie: Allows -changes to smb.conf as well as general operation with root privilidges. The option that +changes to smb.conf as well as general operation with root privileges. The option that creates this ability is the -a flag to swat. Do not use this in any production environment. -

Global Settings

The Globals button will expose a page that allows configuration of the global parameters in smb.conf. There are three levels of exposure of the parameters:

@@ -135,9 +134,9 @@ After making any changes to configuration parameters make sure that you click on your changes will be immediately lost.
Note
SWAT has context sensitive help. To find out what each parameter is for simply click the -Help link to the left of the configurartion parameter. -

Share Settings

-To affect a currenly configured share, simply click on the pull down button between the +Help link to the left of the configuration parameter. +

Share Settings

+To affect a currently configured share, simply click on the pull down button between the Choose Share and the Delete Share buttons, select the share you wish to operate on, then to edit the settings click on the Choose Share button, to delete the share simply press the @@ -146,8 +145,8 @@ select the share you wish to operate on, then to edit the settings click on the To create a new share, next to the button labelled Create Share enter into the text field the name of the share to be created, then click on the Create Share button. -

Printers Settings

-To affect a currenly configured printer, simply click on the pull down button between the +

Printers Settings

+To affect a currently configured printer, simply click on the pull down button between the Choose Printer and the Delete Printer buttons, select the printer you wish to operate on, then to edit the settings click on the Choose Printer button, to delete the share simply press the @@ -156,23 +155,23 @@ select the printer you wish to operate on, then to edit the settings click on th To create a new printer, next to the button labelled Create Printer enter into the text field the name of the share to be created, then click on the Create Printer button. -

The SWAT Wizard

-The purpose if the SWAT Wizard is to help the Microsoft knowledgable network administrator +

The SWAT Wizard

+The purpose if the SWAT Wizard is to help the Microsoft knowledgeable network administrator to configure Samba with a minimum of effort.

-The Wizard page provides a tool for rewiting the smb.conf file in fully optimised format. +The Wizard page provides a tool for rewriting the smb.conf file in fully optimised format. This will also happen if you press the commit button. The two differ in the the rewrite button ignores any changes that may have been made, while the Commit button causes all changes to be affected.

The Edit button permits the editing (setting) of the minimal set of -options that may be necessary to create a working samba server. +options that may be necessary to create a working Samba server.

-Finally, there are a limited set of options that will determine what type of server samba +Finally, there are a limited set of options that will determine what type of server Samba will be configured for, whether it will be a WINS server, participate as a WINS client, or -operate with no WINS support. By clicking on one button you can elect to epose (or not) user +operate with no WINS support. By clicking on one button you can elect to expose (or not) user home directories. -

The Status Page

The status page serves a limited purpose. Firstly, it allows control of the samba daemons. The key daemons that create the samba server environment are: smbd, nmbd, winbindd.

@@ -183,11 +182,11 @@ conditions with minimal effort.

Lastly, the Status page may be used to terminate specific smbd client connections in order to free files that may be locked. -

The View Page

-This page allows the administrator to view the optimised smb.conf file and if you are -particularly massochistic will permit you also to see all possible global configuration +

The View Page

+This page allows the administrator to view the optimised smb.conf file and, if you are +particularly masochistic, will permit you also to see all possible global configuration parameters and their settings. -

The Password Change Page

The Password Change page is a popular tool. This tool allows the creation, deletion, deactivation and reactivation of MS Windows networking users on the local machine. Alternatively, you can use this tool to change a local password for a user account. -- cgit