Red Hat Knowledgebase

In Samba you can restrict access via TCP/IP and/or via users/groups. The hosts allow field can be used in the [global] section to limit access via TCP/IP to the entire Samba server. This option can also be used on a per share basis.

You can restrict access via users/groups on a per share basis. The example below shows a bare bones smb.conf file that only allows traffic from the 10.0.0.0/255.255.255.255 network, and has more detailed access restrictions on its shares. In this case the valid users parameter is used to restrict access via users/groups. Notice that group names are prepended with an @ symbol.

/etc/samba/smb.conf

[global] workgroup = WORKGROUP netbios name = LOCALHOST security = share hosts allow = 127.0.0. 10. [share1] comment = First Share path = /home/share1 #bob janet and all members of groupa are permitted access valid users = bob janet @groupa #only machines with 10.0.0.5, 10.2.5.10, and 10.0.1.1-255 are allowed hosts allow = 10.0.0.5 10.2.5.10 10.0.1.