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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 of samba. It has a wizard that may help to get samba configured quickly, it has context 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.
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 parameter settings, so when SWAT writes the smb.conf file to disk it will write only those parameters that are at other than the default settings. The result is that all comments will be lost from the smb.conf file. Additionally, the parameters will be written back in 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.
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.
The nature and location of the network super-daemon varies with the operating system implementation. The control file (or files) can be located in the file /etc/inetd.conf or in the directory /etc/[x]inet.d or similar.
The control entry for the older style file might be:
# swat is the Samba Web Administration Tool 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, \
# connect to port 901 with your favorite web browser.
service swat
{
port = 901
socket_type = stream
wait = no
only_from = localhost
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/swat
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 as well as other control information. The default location for this on most Linux systems is in the directory /usr/share/samba/swat. The default location using samba defaults will be /usr/local/samba/swat.
Access to SWAT will prompt for a logon. If you log onto SWAT as any non-root user the only permission allowed is to view certain aspects of configuration as well as access to the password change facility. The buttons that will be exposed to the non-root user are: , , , . The only page that allows change capability in this case is .
So long as you log onto SWAT as the user root you should obtain full change and commit ability. The buttons that will be exposed includes: , , , , , , , .
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
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
root# stunnel -p /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem -d 901 \ -l /usr/local/samba/bin/swat swat
afterwords simply contact to swat by using the URL https://myhost:901, accept the certificate and the SSL connection is up.
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 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.
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 privileges. The option that creates this ability is the -a flag to swat. Do not use this in any production environment.
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:
Basic - exposes common configuration options.
Advanced - exposes configuration options needed in more complex environments.
Developer - exposes configuration options that only the brave will want to tamper with.
To switch to other than Basic editing ability click on either the Advanced or the Developer dial, then click the button.
After making any changes to configuration parameters make sure that you click on the button before moving to another area otherwise your changes will be immediately lost.
SWAT has context sensitive help. To find out what each parameter is for simply click the link to the left of the configuration parameter.
To affect a currently configured share, simply click on the pull down button between the and the buttons, select the share you wish to operate on, then to edit the settings click on the button, to delete the share simply press the button.
To create a new share, next to the button labelled enter into the text field the name of the share to be created, then click on the button.
To affect a currently configured printer, simply click on the pull down button between the and the buttons, select the printer you wish to operate on, then to edit the settings click on the button, to delete the share simply press the button.
To create a new printer, next to the button labelled enter into the text field the name of the share to be created, then click on the button.
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 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 button permits the editing (setting) of the minimal set of 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 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 expose (or not) user home directories.
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.
The daemons may be controlled individually or as a total group. Additionally, you may set an automatic screen refresh timing. As MS Windows clients interact with Samba new smbd processes will be continually spawned. The auto-refresh facility will allow you to track the changing 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.
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 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.
When logged in as a non-root account the user will have to provide the old password as well as the new password (twice). When logged in as root only the new password is required.
One popular use for this tool is to change user passwords across a range of remote MS Windows servers.