Ubuntu: Using Samba to share Apt Cache archives across local network

We will copy apt cache archive and create a folder

that can accessed over network using samba.

create directory inside /home/sangram my username

mkdir -p /home/sangram/cache/apt/archives

Copy all deb files from archive

sudo mv /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb /home/sangram/cache/apt/archives

Create a user sadmin for purpose of software installtion

Create a New User

sudo adduser --no-create-home sadmin

sudo adduser sadmin

I kept password say "sangram" for user sadmin

You can delete sadmin user by following command

sudo deluser --remove-home sadmin

groupdel sadmin

you can switch user to samin as follows

su sadmin

Add the User to the sudo Group

sudo usermod -aG sudo sadmin

List groups to which sadmin belongs

groups sadmin

Then add sadmin to samba group & set samba password

sudo smbpasswd -a sadmin

Add user sadmin to groups

sudo usermod -aG sambashare sadmin

Change Ownership of /home/sangram/cache/apt/archives folder to sadmin

sudo chown -R sangram:sambashare /home/sangram/cache/

sudo chmod 775 /home/sangram/cache/apt/archives

List users added to samba group

sudo pdbedit -L

Edit smb.conf to make folder /home/sangram/cache/apt/archives

available over network.

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Add following to end of file

[SharedAptCacheArchives]

path = /home/sangram/cache/apt/archives

browsable = yes

writable = yes

guest ok = no

read only = no

create mask = 0755

directory mask = 0755

force create mode = 0755

Add following to global section

usershare owner only = false

how to test smb.conf configuration is correct

testparm

Restart samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd nmbd

If My Machine Ip Address is 192.168.0.122 then smb://192.168.0.122/SharedAptCacheArchives

will be network url

Mount Shared SharedAptCacheArchives folder

cd /mnt

sudo mkdir SharedAptCacheArchives

sudo chmod 750 /home/sangram

sudo chown sangram:sambashare /home/sangram

sudo chmod -R 755 /mnt/SharedAptCacheArchives

sudo chown -R sangram:sambashare /mnt/SharedAptCacheArchives

sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.0.122/SharedAptCacheArchives /mnt/SharedAptCacheArchives -o sec=ntlmv2,username=sadmin,password=sangram,vers=3.0,uid=$(id -u sadmin),gid=$(id -g sadmin)

If mounted successfully then /mnt/SharedAptCacheArchives will acts as if

this folder contain all debian files in it from /home/sangram/cache/apt/archives

Enable Required Services (troubleshooting):

sudo systemctl enable systemd-networkd-wait-online

sudo systemctl enable networkd-dispatcher.service

sudo systemctl enable systemd-networkd.service

sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager-wait-online.service

systemctl status networkd-dispatcher.service systemd-networkd.service

View Logs of error in mounting at

sudo dmesg | tail -n 20

You can also view mounted filesystems by checking the /proc/mounts file

cat /proc/mounts

Check Folder Permission

cd /home/sangram/cache/apt/archives/

ls *.deb -ld .

To test our setting we will use smbclient as follows

List all shared folderson the ip address (Machine)

smbclient -L //192.168.0.122 -U sadmin

You can check if our setup worked or not by using smbclient.

After login run "ls"command to verify files are there.

smbclient //192.168.0.122/SharedAptCacheArchives -U sadmin

smbclient //192.168.0.122/SharedAptCacheArchives -U sangram

Logs of error while mounting can be viewed by following query:

sudo dmesg | tail -n 20