samba-admin-ui

A simple web UI to manage Samba users and shares for homelab environments.

This project is intentionally minimal and opinionated: it focuses on the most common Samba tasks without trying to replace full system configuration or enterprise tooling.

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This project is built and maintained in my free time.
If it helps you or saves you some time, you can support my work on

Thank you for your support!

Features

Samba

• List Samba users
• Create Samba users (with password confirmation)
• Enable / disable Samba users
• Delete Samba users
• Create, enable, disable and delete Samba shares
• UI-managed shares are kept separate from manually managed shares

Linux (read-only in UI)

• List Linux users (UID ≥ 1000)
• Show UID and group IDs
• Indicate whether a Samba user exists as a Linux user

Architecture

• Runs fully containerized
• Uses SQLite for internal state
• Linux users are created automatically on container start if missing
• Samba configuration (smb.conf) is mounted read-only
• No direct editing of system files through the UI
• Runs on Raspberry Pi

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Non-Goals

This project deliberately does not aim to:

• Replace full Samba configuration management
• Edit advanced Samba options
• Manage Linux groups or ACLs via UI (planned post-MVP)
• Be an enterprise-ready or multi-tenant solution

This is a homelab-focused tool.

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Docker Usage

Minimal docker-compose.yml

services:
  samba-admin-ui:
    image: ghcr.io/florianibach/samba-admin-ui:latest
    container_name: samba-admin-ui
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      # (optional) Samba config (read-only)
      - ./samba-admin-ui/samba/smb.conf:/etc/samba/smb.conf:ro      

      # UI-managed share definitions
      - ./samba-admin-ui/samba:/etc/samba

      # Samba internal databases (users, passwords, state)
      - ./samba-admin-ui/samba-lib:/var/lib/samba

      # Internal app database (SQLite)
      - ./samba-admin-ui/data:/data

      # Actual share paths on the host
      - /srv/disk0:/shares

Then open:

http://localhost:8080

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Important Notes

• The container runs as root to manage Samba and Linux users.
• Linux users are created without passwords and with nologin.
• Only users with UID ≥ 1000 are shown in the Linux users overview.
• This tool assumes you know what you are doing — it is designed for trusted environments.

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Data Persistence

You should persist at least:

• /var/lib/samba – Samba users and passwords
• /data/ – internal application state
• /etc/samba/shares.d – UI-managed shares

If you want to mount an existing samba configuration, mount (you can mount this as read-only):

• /etc/samba/smb.conf - must contain include = /etc/samba/shares.d/ui/shares.conf at the end of the global section

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Project Status

MVP – stable and usable

Planned post-MVP features:

• Linux user management
• Improved responsive UI

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License

MIT