n CentOS this installing samba is quick and easy. You can use this as a windows share on another system, for example to backup from your windows server to your CentOS server. Samba can not be run on OpenVZ, just on KVM or Dedicated servers.
1) Install samba
yum -y install samba
2) create a new user. lets call it guest
adduser guest passwd backup (enter the password twice)
3) Create config file Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and remove everything (I delete and edit as new)
[global]
browseable = no
log level = 2
#socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_SNDBUF=8192 SO_RCVBUF=8192
#socket options = SO_RCVBUF=4096 SO_SNDBUF=4096 IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_KEEPALIVE
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_SNDBUF=8576 SO_RCVBUF=8576
read raw = no
write raw = no
dead time = 15
getwd cache = yes
large readwrite = no
read size = 2048
# backup [backup]
path = /home/backup guest ok = no public = no writable = yes valid users = backup
4) Set a password for samba user backup
smbpasswd -a backup
5) Load CIFS module with
modprobe cifs
6) Restart samba
/etc/init.d/smb restart /etc/init.d/nmb restart
You also may want to have it start on boot with
/sbin/chkconfig smb on
That the final step. You can mount this on a windows system using the path
\\your.ipaddress\backup
Username is backup and the password set, from the above example. Your username of course may vary
For security I would firewall off the samba port and allow only known IPs. At minimum have a yum update running daily for security updates.