Explanation of smbstatus output

Question

Can anyone explain me smbstatus output? What do the 2 sections ("pid-username-group-machine" and "service-pid-machine-connected at") mean?

Answer 1

The first listing is a listing of samba processes. But you can also view it as a listing of users that have active connections to the server. The information is Process ID (PID), Username of the account that's being accessed, Primary Group of the account that's being accessed, and the Machine/IP address that this is happening from.

If this is all you want you can use smbstatus -p

The 2nd group is a listings of shares that are currently being accessed. This will also includes hidden shares and printers. Because it's possible that a listing of current users who have connections can be accessing more than one service. So the information here is Service name, Process ID, Machine name who's accessing the service, and the time that the connection was established. You can use the PID to cross reference the service records with the users.

If this is all you want to see you can use smbstatus -S

The rest of the output is the file locking status for the files that are being accessed.

smbstatus -L will show you only this information.