Sharing the Harmony Database Files Using Samba on macOS

Installing Samba for a macOS server is only required if you have Windows based client workstations on your network, as they cannot connect to the database server using NFS. Because Samba is no longer supported by macOS, it must be installed as a third party software on your machine.

Configuring a Harmony database server to share via Samba requires the following steps:

  • Disabling the SMB file sharing protocol natively supported by macOS. This protocol may interfere with Samba. Since its options are limited and optimized for personal use, it cannot be used for a Harmony server.
  • Installing SMBup, a third-party implementaton of Samba for macOS.
  • Configuring the shared folders.
  • Creating a Sharing type user account. This is required because this implementation of Samba fails to authenticate users that are part of 15 groups or more, and macOS subscribes all users to more than 15 system groups in the back-end, except for Sharing type users.
IMPORTANTSince this procedure requires installing and configuring a third party software, consider these instructions as indicative only. Using Samba to connect to a macOS based Harmony server cannot be guaranteed to succeed and, even if it succeeds, nothing guarantees it will still work after updating macOS.