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I'm using a NAS (Buffalo LinkStation Pro with SSH access, if that matters) which runs Linux (2.6.31.8 #1 Fri Jun 8 11:07:30 JST 2012 armv5tel GNU/Linux, with smbd --version = Version 3.0.30-1.4.osstech), while all clients run Windows 7. Currently, the shares are on a xfs partition. How can samba be modified such that the share behaves like an NTFS share to the clients, i.e. allowing for encryption? Or do I need to reformat the partition as an NTFS drive (or more likely, use a loop-mounted NTFS file)?

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Do you want the server or the client to do the encryption? If you want to do encryption in the Windows client, you're asking on the wrong site: flag to have your question migrated to Super User. – Gilles Oct 10 '12 at 23:12
@Gilles I'd prefer if the client did the actual encryption. But what I'm asking for is how (if possible) to set up samba (or whatever else is required on a Linux server) such that a network share will be treated with EFS support. It's a question about a Linux server interacting with Windows clients, so if the question is off-topic here, I'd rather have it migrated to Server Fault. But since the ideal solution would simple have the NAS share look like a true Windows machine share, it is a *nix question IMHO – Tobias Kienzler Oct 11 '12 at 5:46
@Gilles ... However, I may have asked the wrong question. How to set up an encrypted directory to be mounted only during samba access? is maybe a better idea... – Tobias Kienzler Oct 11 '12 at 6:09

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A Samba share can never behave as a NTFS share, only as a SMB/CIFS share. If you want encryption then you will need to use a per-file/directory tool, or implement it in the server instead.

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Does that mean there is no way to have the NAS share files that are en-/decrypted transparently on the client side? – Tobias Kienzler Oct 10 '12 at 15:04
The NAS will share whatever files you like, but the transparency must be handled by the client unless you, again, implement it in the server. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Oct 10 '12 at 15:12
And can't NTFS do exactly that, and the NAS would simply store the encrypted data more or less without knowing it's encrypted? – Tobias Kienzler Oct 10 '12 at 15:15
Yes. But you can't use NTFS over SMB. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Oct 10 '12 at 15:16
I see :-/ So the only way to have transparent client-side encryption is via some third-party software? Can't I share like another Windows PC does, where encryption is possible? – Tobias Kienzler Oct 10 '12 at 15:23

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