I’m glad to announce that the free Samba port for iOS is out now. Samba is an implementation of the Windows SMB protocol (which allows you to access devices over your network). This allows you to see your iDevice files over your WiFi networks with no additional software required on your computer.
While SMB was made by Microsoft, Samba ports exist for Linux, Mac OS and tons of other OSes so you can access your device from all of those as well.
The current default configuration for Samba on iOS gives you read-only access to most of the file system and write access to an empty storage directory. This is actually done to prevent accidental damage (it’s easy in Windows Explorer to move a directory from one place to the other by accident). If you want more control over the sharing I highly recommend reading about Samba and how to configure it to do what you want (the configuration file resides in /etc/samba/smb.conf).
This port should was tested on iOS 3 and 4 (iOS 5 will be supported when it’s out).
Popular use cases might include:
- Going to your friends and using your iDevice as an portable storage device which works over WiFi without needing any file copying software on their Windows machine.
- Browsing your photos from your favorite photo viewer on your computer over WiFi.
- For the advanced users you can have full streaming access to your iDevice files from your computer.
Some notes:
- This version has no hidden costs, it’s free.
- This port will not allow you to mount an external SMB drive on your iPhone (that would require a kernel driver).
- When installing Samba, please configure it before first-time usage in the settings app under Samba.
- If you don’t understand something or have a question, please take the time to check the FAQ link in the settings app.
BigBoss Authors: Mark Bruce & Kory Lee
July 8th, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Gr8! Really needed.
July 8th, 2011 at 10:24 pm
A bit cumbersome to get started, disable samba, enter password, press change password, enable samba (in this order), but once connected it works great. Check samba.conf for share names (3GS/4.2.1+Win7). Need the FAQ to assist users with mandatory requirements (Win + iOS). A great start :):)
July 8th, 2011 at 11:16 pm
awesome, works great, thanks! anything aginst leaving it running all the time? use more battery ? memory ? cpu etc ?
July 9th, 2011 at 7:19 am
That’s great!
July 9th, 2011 at 7:42 am
How did you change from version 3.2.7?
July 9th, 2011 at 9:04 am
It’s a shame that PC networking does the same job and that transfers are not faster than 950KB/s.
Can’t watch a video like that. So no point.
July 9th, 2011 at 11:17 am
You do not need to disable samba to enter password. And yes, forcing a non empty password is for security measures.
July 9th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Running smbd (the Enabled feature) will just take some memory, if there are no connections, no CPU will be used.
Running nmbd (Publish name feature) will take a tiny ammount of CPU once in a while to answer samba broadcast discovery packets.
July 9th, 2011 at 11:21 am
Compiled it from samba.org
July 11th, 2011 at 9:15 am
i already have ifile . is samba better than ifile ?
July 11th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
This might be a dumb question!I jail broke my iphone 3gs lastnite and lovn it but im a beginner.
Q: is there an app to link/tether file share my iphone 3gs wirelessly to my ipad 2
July 11th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
They are not the same… iFile is an internal File System browser. Samba (server here) allows other devices to access your iDevice’s file system.
July 11th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
both devices have bluetooth radio. you could buy ‘Celeste’ and transfer files between them using Celeste. and perhaps iFile has bluetooth support. however, if you have access for both devices to get onto a wifi network you could also use ‘scp’ from the SSH command-line or MobileTerminal
July 11th, 2011 at 11:10 pm
Hmm. I seem to always get an error while installing Samba. Samba Core installs just fine, but get error codes when installing the GUI element. Even after a restore, the problem persists:
“subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)”
I haven’t had any problems with other packages, so I’m not sure what the problem could be.
July 12th, 2011 at 12:19 am
You should install sbsettings and then try installing samba. seems like a problem with the package. author will need to update.
July 12th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
as noted above, how is this different than iFile web server feature. I already have iFile, do I need samba ?
July 12th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
the file sharing feature of iFile is tremendous, but it’s ultimately limited compared to the full features of Samba. It depends on your needs; if iFile does everything you need then you have it. Samba would be great for copying many files at once, which would take some time in iFile one at a time.
July 13th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
Samba allows a couple things over iFile:
1. Multiple files (or whole directories) at once
2. Use without a web browser
Downsides:
1. Haven’t checked, and depends on WiFi speed, but probably slower transfer for large files.
One other thing:
It would be great for someone to make an app to use this capability for syncing w/o iTunes.
(Like you put a whole bunch of media in a folder on your device and then run this one app and it adds all the stuff to ur library?)
July 13th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
that is what PwnTunes does for music i think
July 16th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
Yes,I need to update
July 16th, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Help my cydia not open
July 16th, 2011 at 11:40 pm
Putra goblokkkkkk
July 17th, 2011 at 4:15 am
I don’t understand any of this. I just wanna know how to get backgrounder for 4.2.1?
July 18th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
Hi guys. I can’t connect wep wireless internet in my iPhone 3G after I upgrade 4.2.1 but I can connect free wireless net.
Can some1 help me to solve my problem :(
July 19th, 2011 at 7:53 pm
hey, seems like i’ve got sporadic springboard crashes ever since installed samba. other than that – nicely done
July 20th, 2011 at 7:03 pm
If you think those crashes are somehow related to samba, you would be better off sending the crash logs to the author via the cydia contact email then writing here.
July 22nd, 2011 at 6:11 pm
how do I get read and write access?
July 22nd, 2011 at 7:04 pm
I know Pwntunes does that, I want a free alternative.
July 23rd, 2011 at 7:44 am
change the file /etc/smb.conf and remove the “read only = yes” lines from it.
July 23rd, 2011 at 7:51 pm
after I deleted samba from cydia I can still access the iphone folders, How I get rid of that ???
it’s even showing the iphone in windows network on the control panel
July 25th, 2011 at 7:01 am
This makes your idevice look like a windows pc/server to your network. Access to the device will be the same as to a windows pc sharing folders. iFile have an inbuilt webserver for copying files, while with samba you will use finder or explorer on the remote mac/pc for access.
July 25th, 2011 at 7:06 am
Samba is the gui part. ‘samba core’ is the package that does the work
July 25th, 2011 at 9:41 am
How do I delete ‘samba core’ ?
it’s not in my cydia installed packages
July 27th, 2011 at 3:19 am
change your cydia settings to “hacker” or “dev”
July 27th, 2011 at 3:20 am
you should try searching for it on cydia its in one of the main repos
July 30th, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Fhdhyddvn
August 15th, 2011 at 10:22 am
Gr8! Really needed.
August 17th, 2011 at 6:53 am
“ezShare” has since long time a SMB drive option, but it is not free. With a symbolic link manually created with iFile in the prog dir, you can access all your iDevice as you want.
August 21st, 2011 at 9:56 pm
Help me sydia all support and others option or free item
August 26th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
A7bk
August 27th, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Welcome, Guest!upload filesmy accountpremium zone
06Please wait …
or buy a premium account for faster speeds
and no wait times!
Welcome, Guest!upload filesmy accountpremium zone
06Please wait …
or buy a premium account for faster speeds
and no wait times!
August 29th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
I wanna use it first
August 30th, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Thank you
September 7th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
I want install cydia software at my iPhone..
October 1st, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Salam
October 7th, 2011 at 9:26 am
I can’t download keyboard Farsi for my iphone4 why?
October 7th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Fmhsbg bgsnyvh
October 14th, 2011 at 12:02 am
I’m strugglin to download whatzapp on mi phone,it’s new to me it’s complicated.
December 21st, 2011 at 6:00 pm
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January 18th, 2012 at 8:53 pm
Greatly appreciated
February 11th, 2012 at 9:47 am
Hello. I want to create an WiFi Hotspot with my Iphone (not Windows adhoc) instantly to share Files from iphone to Windows over Samba, but without sharing iPhones internet connection and without using an other wifi hotspot.
So far i tried with PDAnet and MyWi, also iOS Personal Hotspot. But opening \\ doesn’t work in Windows.
I’m not sure, if i need OpenSSH for that?
Can someone help on that?
March 12th, 2012 at 11:03 am
Great! Very powerful tool!
I wanna use other user to connect samba. So, I Added “mobile” using smbpasswd:
smbpasswd -a mobile
but, I always got “You have not permission to use the network resources”. What should I do?