Docker container of Samba, an implementation of the SMB networking protocol.

Features ✨

• Provides a lightweight SMB file server
• Configurable share name and credentials
• Supports multiple users via a list file
• Supports read-only and read-write shares
• Allows custom Samba configuration
• Works with Windows, macOS, and Linux clients
• Lightweight Alpine-based image

Usage 🐳

Docker Compose:

services:
  samba:
    image: dockurr/samba
    container_name: samba
    environment:
      NAME: "Shared"
      USER: "samba"
      PASS: "secret"
    ports:
      - 445:445
    volumes:
      - ./data:/shared
    restart: always

Docker CLI:

docker run -it --rm --name samba -p 445:445 -e "NAME=Shared" -e "USER=samba" -e "PASS=secret" -v "${PWD:-.}/data:/shared" docker.io/dockurr/samba

Configuration ⚙️

How do I choose which folder to share?

To choose your shared folder, include the following bind mount in your compose file:

volumes:
  - ./data:/shared

Replace the example path ./data with the desired folder or named volume.

How do I change the share name?

You can change the name displayed to SMB clients with the NAME environment variable:

environment:
  NAME: "Shared"

How do I connect to the shared folder?

On Windows, enter the following in File Explorer:

\\192.168.0.2\Shared

On macOS or Linux, use:

smb://192.168.0.2/Shared

Replace 192.168.0.2 with the IP address of the host and Shared with the configured share name.

Note

This container only provides the SMB file server and does not run a WS-Discovery service. As a result, the server will normally not appear automatically under Network in Windows.

How do I change the credentials?

You can use the USER and PASS environment variables to configure the username and password:

environment:
  USER: "samba"
  PASS: "secret"

The default username is samba and the default password is secret.

How do I configure file ownership?

By default, the container automatically uses the user and group IDs of the /shared directory. If either ID is 0, it falls back to 1000 for that value.

You can override the detected values with the UID and GID environment variables:

environment:
  UID: "1002"
  GID: "1005"

This is useful when the ownership of the mounted directory does not match the IDs you want Samba to use.

How do I make the share read-only?

Set RW to false:

environment:
  RW: "false"

This changes the Samba share to read-only.

How do I provide a custom Samba configuration?

For advanced configuration, you can provide your own smb.conf. The default smb.conf can be used as a starting point.

Bind your custom configuration to the container like this:

volumes:
  - ./smb.conf:/etc/samba/smb.conf

How do I configure multiple users?

To configure multiple users, bind a users.conf file to the container:

volumes:
  - ./users.conf:/etc/samba/users.conf

Each non-empty line defines one user using the following format:

username:UID:groupname:GID:password:homedir

For example:

john:1001:users:1001:secret:/shared
jane:1002:users:1001:anothersecret:/shared

The fields are:

• username — Username of the account.
• UID — Numeric user ID.
• groupname — Name of the primary group.
• GID — Numeric group ID.
• password — Password of the Samba account. It cannot contain :, \n, or \r.
• homedir — Optional home directory. Defaults to /shared when omitted.

Lines starting with # and empty lines are ignored.

Stars 🌟