1. sudo apt-get install swat xinetd

2. sudo nano /etc/xinetd.d/swat

3. Insert the following text (borrowed from http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/SWAT.html#xinetd):

# 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 = no
}

4. Exit and Save

Running Swat

1. Invoke an init script (depreciated) sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restart

   or use the services utility sudo service xinetd restart

2. Point your browser to http://localhost:901/

3. Enter the username and password of a user with proper privileges

Questions

Q: The swat help links do not work. How do I tell swat where to find the man pages?

A: You don’t have to tell swat where they are you have to install them.

sudo apt-get install samba-doc

Q: When I open the web page I only see four boxes (Home, Status, View, Password) but none of these boxes give me the ability to configure Samba. What should I do?

A: You do not have the necessary permissions. You will need to ensure you are a user of the administration group (‘admin’) and that the adm group has sufficient access rights to the Samba configuration file (‘smb.conf’). Note the user created during the installation is automatically a member of the adm group.

To ensure the adm group has proper permissions over ‘smb.conf’ use ‘chmod’ and ‘chgrp’ tools to change the file access permissions and group permissions respectively:

sudo chmod g+w /etc/samba/smb.conf
sudo chgrp adm /etc/samba/smb.conf

Another method is to grant all users—the whole world essentially—complete access to ‘smb.conf’. This is not recommended for obvious security reasons.

sudo chmod 777 /etc/samba/smb.conf

Now refresh your browser window and you should see additional boxes for Globals, Shares, Printers and Wizard.

Q: On my 6.06 LTS server clients don't see the swat page. It is just a blank page. What now?

A: Edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file so that the file contains a line for allowed hosts like:

sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf 

or, if you are not that comfortable with vi:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Add or change the following line:

[global]
        ......
        .......    
        hosts allow = 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0

[printers]

Of course this has to match your own network settings. After this you have to restart the samba subsystem.

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

Q: On my 9.04 Server i can't access swat. If I test with ss -lt there is a line with

...
LISTEN  0  0  :::swat  :::*
...

A: Swat seems to be bound to IPv6 instead of IPv4 A2: IPv6 sockets include IPv4 connectivity by default (unless turned off by the process).

Edit the following line with sudo nano /etc/inetd.conf

swat  stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/swat

into

swat  stream tcp4 nowait.400 root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/swat

then restart inetd with sudo /etc/init.d/inetutils-inetd restart

CategoryNetworking