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I'm trying to customise the parameters of /usr/sbin/smbd in Big Sur. Most posts advise to tweak /etc/nsmb.conf. However it seems that modifying /etc/nsmb.conf has no effect for me.

I even tried introducing a syntax error in /etc/nsmb.conf. Stopping smbd with launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist and checking that no smbd is alive. Finally restarting smbd with launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist. But /usr/sbin/smbd doesn't pick up any syntax error and runs normally.

I tried looking for other *smb* files in /etc and /Library and found none. Could it be that Apple doesn't allow modifying the parameters of smbd in Big Sur? Or perhaps should I look at other files?

Thanks for any suggestions!

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  • According to man smbd, /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server.plist is used but shouldn't be updated manually. The string "nsmb.conf" doesn't even appear in /usr/sbin/smbd, are you looking at Linux documentation maybe?
    – nohillside ♦
    Mar 16, 2021 at 12:27
  • Also, what exactly are you trying to set/define?
    – nohillside ♦
    Mar 16, 2021 at 12:28
  • Thanks for your reply @nohillside. I want to enable automatic home shares. See e.g. howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/…; samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/smb.conf.5.htm. I am assuming I need to edit nsmb.conf. See support.apple.com/en-us/HT204021 and discussions.apple.com/thread/7453680 where they edit nsmb.conf for different purposes.
    – User597
    Mar 16, 2021 at 13:45
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    So you're going to waste everyone's time by claiming that Apple is still shipping Samba in 2021, is that right? Samba is GPL3-licensed. Apple removed Samba in 10.7 (2011).
    – Marc Wilson
    Jun 18, 2021 at 6:09
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    @Mint It's Apple's own implementation of the server side of the SMB protocol
    – Elezar
    Feb 8, 2023 at 8:02

1 Answer 1

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See the comments above from @nohillside and @Marc Wilson. Samba cannot be configured in OSX as you would do in Linux. Thanks @nohillside and @Marc Wilson.

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  • That's not really true. If you download and run Samba on MacOS, you can configure it the same way as you would in Linux. However, as mentioned in the comments above, MacOS doesn't include Samba anymore, and has its own implementation of the SMB protocol. Unsurprisingly, since it's not using Samba, you can't configure it the same way you would configure Samba.
    – Elezar
    Feb 8, 2023 at 8:07

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