Er is ook een nederlandse versie van dit document.

Swat is a part of the Samba suite.
It's a small webserver which is intended to let you ;

• make/change your smb.conf
• manage your smb users
• starting and stopping samba

But hey, I'm a slacker! Why would I need a GUI tool just to manage SAMBA

True....

• Swat takes possesion of your /etc/samba/smb.conf. All you comments in there will be gone after you use Swat one time.
• After you've found your way in Samba it's a bit clumsy/slow.
• Everything goes over the network in clear tekst, including your password.

• You've got a huge amount off documentation just waiting for a mouse click.
• All Samba's options have a link to their man page section.
• You can't make typos in the option names.
• It really smoothens the Samba learning curve.
• And finally you start editing your smb.conf, it's a lot quicker that way.

swat:
From the manpage

SWAT(8) SWAT(8) NAME swat - Samba Web Administration Tool SYNOPSIS swat [ -s ] [ -a ] DESCRIPTION This tool is part of the Sambasuite. swat allows a Samba administrator to configure the complex smb.conf(5)file via a Web browser. In addition, a swat configuration page has help links to all the configurable options in the smb.conf file allowing an administrator to easily look up the effects of any change.

Swat is started by the inetd daemon.
That way Swat is only started when there is a need for it.

To be fair, this really is a RTFM topic. Everything which is about to follow comes straight out off the manpage. Just watch:

(It is possible that most off the work has been done while installing your distro (this is the case with slack (what do mean by "unfriendly distro"))) :D

To configure your system for Swat 2 files need to be altered:

• /etc/services
• /etc/inetd.conf

/etc/services:
From the services manpage

SERVICES(5) Linux Programmer's Manual SERVICES(5) NAME services - Internet network services list DESCRIPTION services is a plain ASCII file providing a mapping between friendly textual names for internet services, and their underlying assigned port numbers and protocol types. Every networking program should look into this file to get the port number (and protocol) for its service. The C library routines getservent(3), getservbyname(3), getservby- port(3), setservent(3), and endservent(3) support querying this file from programs.

In /etc/services a line must be added for swat.
From the swat manpage

In /etc/services you need to add a line like this: swat 901/tcp

In my case (slackware, which allready had that line) it looks like this:

accessbuilder 888/udp swat 901/tcp # samba web configuration tool ftps-data 989/tcp # ftp protocol, data, over TLS/SSL

The lines about accesbuilder and ftps-dat have nothing to do with swat offcourse. I left them in to give the swat line a proper placing. But it really doesn't make any difference where you place that line in /etc/services.

/etc/inetd.conf
From the inetd manpage

Upon execution, inetd reads its configuration information from a configu- ration file which, by default, is /etc/inetd.conf. There must be an entry for each field of the configuration file, with entries for each field separated by a tab or a space. Comments are denoted by a ``#'' at the beginning of a line. There must be an entry for each field. The fields of the configuration file are as follows: service name socket type protocol wait/nowait[.max] user[.group] or user[:group] server program server program arguments

The swat manpage litterly gives us the line which needs to be added to /etc/inetd.conf:

In /etc/inetd.conf you should add a line like this: swat stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/local/samba/bin/swat swat

But there is a little catch.
The last mention off swat is on his own line, while this really should be an option to the swat command. De line should really be:

swat stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/local/samba/bin/swat swat

Check if the command "/usr/local/samba/bin/swat: is correct for you setup. It's quite possible that the swat executable is in a different location on your system.
You can make this check with the command (as root) `which swat`.

root@bilbo:/home/bilbo# which swat /usr/sbin/swat root@bilbo:/home/bilbo#

If I would leave /etc/inet.conf as it is, swat will not work on my system (as a matter off fact I allready had the correct line in /etc/inetd.conf).

#Samba Web Administration Tool: #swat stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/sbin/swat swat

I'll only have to remove the "#" character to get the inetd configuration right.

And the swat manpage contineus with:

One you have edited /etc/services and /etc/inetd.conf you need to send a HUP signal to inetd. To do this use kill -1 PID where PID is the process ID of the inetd daemon.

Including. typo :D (But then again, my english isn't perfect either)

Restarting services is allso covered in "Een stukje process management" (just in dutch at the moment, sorry).

After restarting inetd, swat will start if the is a request on port 901.

The swat manpage contineus with:

LAUNCHING To launch SWAT just run your favorite web browser and point it at "http://localhost:901/". Note that you can attach to SWAT from any IP connected machine but connecting from a remote machine leaves your connection open to password sniffing as passwords will be sent in the clear over the wire.

In other words; you browse to you rown machine on port 901. You will be welcomed by Swat's login screen.
You did read the above mentioned "Note" didn't you

Tttttthats all folks, did you see, it's all in the manpages :D

[deleted]Xinetd users (ie RedHat) will have to configure xinetd in stead off inetd. If I get around to it I'll make an appendix for it (got that item somewhere in an IBM book).[/deleted]

[loose thought]What is open source beautifull :D[/loose thought]

Xinetd users (ie in use by Redhat) will have to configure xinetd. See for this purpose Apendix A (that is below :D)

I've noticed that Swat will follow the security rules in smb.conf with regards to "hosts allow" and "hosts deny". If you restrict Samba to your local net (ie hosts allow = 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0) which is a wise thing to do, swat to will only work on your local net.

Apendix A: xinetd

The xinetd way off doing things is a little bit different. Inetd will have all off Swat't options on one line. With xinetd Swat gets its own section. Often a section is sourced from separate files (or is that just RedHat?). Anyway.... this is what I got from scdgro

# 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 = 127.0.0.1 user = root server = /usr/local/samba/bin/swat log_on_failure += USERID disable = no }

The options resemble those of inetd a lot, I think they are quite self explainatory.
Add this to your /etc/xinetd.conf or put it as a file in (at least with RedHat) the directorie /etc/xinetd.d from where the file will be sourced. The exact location may be different in different distro's, but the location must be mentioned in /etc/xinetd.conf

The daemon xinetd requires a restart just as inetd does.

Signing off, love and kisses....
(Laurie Anderson)