Samba (file sharing) for iOS released

Author: openhebrew  //  Category: Apps, News

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

52 Responses to “Samba (file sharing) for iOS released”

  1. v0rt3x Says:

    Gr8! Really needed.

  2. Mes Says:

    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 :):)

  3. Rob Says:

    awesome, works great, thanks! anything aginst leaving it running all the time? use more battery ? memory ? cpu etc ?

  4. yashijoe Says:

    That’s great!

  5. tempura Says:

    How did you change from version 3.2.7?

  6. zYx Says:

    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.

  7. Anonymous Says:

    You do not need to disable samba to enter password. And yes, forcing a non empty password is for security measures.

  8. Anonymous Says:

    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.

  9. Anonymous Says:

    Compiled it from samba.org

  10. matsubi Says:

    i already have ifile . is samba better than ifile ?

  11. Anonymous Says:

    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

  12. Anonymous Says:

    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.

  13. Anonymous Says:

    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

  14. Nick Says:

    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.

  15. Anonymous Says:

    You should install sbsettings and then try installing samba. seems like a problem with the package. author will need to update.

  16. usher Says:

    as noted above, how is this different than iFile web server feature. I already have iFile, do I need samba ?

  17. Anonymous Says:

    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.

  18. PitaJ Says:

    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?)

  19. Anonymous Says:

    that is what PwnTunes does for music i think

  20. Awbar Says:

    Yes,I need to update

  21. Putra Says:

    Help my cydia not open

  22. Putra dongo Says:

    Putra goblokkkkkk

  23. Anonymous. Says:

    I don’t understand any of this. I just wanna know how to get backgrounder for 4.2.1?

  24. Arjun Says:

    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 :(

  25. avb77 Says:

    hey, seems like i’ve got sporadic springboard crashes ever since installed samba. other than that – nicely done

  26. Anonymous Says:

    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.

  27. ruben Says:

    how do I get read and write access?

  28. PitaJ Says:

    I know Pwntunes does that, I want a free alternative.

  29. Anonymous Says:

    change the file /etc/smb.conf and remove the “read only = yes” lines from it.

  30. Anonymous Says:

    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

  31. Anonymous Says:

    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.

  32. Anonymous Says:

    Samba is the gui part. ‘samba core’ is the package that does the work

  33. Anonymous Says:

    How do I delete ‘samba core’ ?
    it’s not in my cydia installed packages

  34. Nevershoutchris Says:

    change your cydia settings to “hacker” or “dev”

  35. Nevershoutchris Says:

    you should try searching for it on cydia its in one of the main repos

  36. French ugh Says:

    Fhdhyddvn

  37. vivi Says:

    Gr8! Really needed.

  38. VJA Says:

    “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.

  39. Humayun kabir Says:

    Help me sydia all support and others option or free item

  40. Mnor Says:

    A7bk

  41. Anonymous Says:

    Welcome, Guest!upload filesmy accountpremium zone

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  42. Semma Says:

    I wanna use it first

  43. Nasser Says:

    Thank you

  44. Anonymous Says:

    I want install cydia software at my iPhone..

  45. Hamed Says:

    Salam

  46. Maryam Says:

    I can’t download keyboard Farsi for my iphone4 why?

  47. Anonymous Says:

    Fmhsbg bgsnyvh

  48. Lindiswa Says:

    I’m strugglin to download whatzapp on mi phone,it’s new to me it’s complicated.

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  50. pjsound Says:

    Greatly appreciated

  51. Railer81 Says:

    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?

  52. dreambillows Says:

    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?

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