Sharing Removable Storage

[Slyke]

Hey, i've just installed Fedora Core 6, with Samba.

I've figured out how to share folders by going to System, Server Settings and Samba, but i can't figure out how to share removable storage.

I have 3 External Harddrives that are connected to my computer via USB, all formatted with NTFS. I can read and write to them fine, but i don't know how to share them so that my Windows computer can read and write to and from them.

[glennzo]

I have an external USB hard disk (NTFS) connected to a Fedora 8 box. It's shared and all computers on the network have r/w access. I'm no Samba guru but here's what I did. It's automatically detected by the system. There's a desktop icon for it, placed there by the system. First I typed mount so I could find out where / how the drive is mounted. In my case it's mounted as /media/FreeaAent so I simply created a share for it in /etc/samba/smb.conf, like so:

[backup]
Comment = FreeAgent Drive
path = /media/FreeAgent
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
public = yes

Then I ran testparm to make sure samba was happy with my work and restarted smb and nmb, sudo /sbin/service smb restart and sudo /sbin/service nmb restart. I should mention that samba security is set to share. Now, on the days that samba decides to work properly (crapshoot) I can access that drive from any computer on the network.

[Slyke]

Okay, i did that, i checked with testparm, and it said that everything was fine.

sudo /sbin/service smb restart
and
sudo /sbin/service nmb restart

Both said "Command not found", tried without the sudo and as root too.

When i tried opening up samba again it just said down the bottom "Starting Samba" and then asked for my password. After which Samba vanished. Every time i tried to check it after that it wouldn't ask for my password, it would just say "starting Samba" then vanish after about 10 seconds.

So i went into services and started the Samba service (along with the nmb service) and check if i could open Samba then. I still couldn't, didn't even ask for a password.

Finally i tried connecting with my Windows computer though the static IP address i have set for the fedora computer, and it worked. Don't ask me how.

Well when i say it worked, it took ages for a password prompt to come up, and no matter what i put into it, it wouldn't authenticate.

[glennzo]

Try rpm -q samba. Post the output.

[Slyke]

Did it, the output is:
samba-3.0.23c-2

[glennzo]

How about rpm -q samba-client samba-common ?? Those are both installed here also.

Edit: Are you looking for a samba gui? If so, then install samba-swat, yum install samba-swat.

[Slyke]

Here's what i did:

[root@localhost ~]# yum install samba-swat
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running. Aborting.
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -q samba-client samba-common
samba-client-3.0.23c-2
samba-common-3.0.23c-2

Tried navigating to http://localhost:901/, but get unable to connect.

Samba still won't open =(. Even after a restart.

SMB & NMB are in my services list.
Fedora is updating (Downloading packages), wonder if it'll be fixed after this.

[glennzo]

Start the xinetd service, service xinetd start, then turn swat on with chkconfig swat on. In your web browser location bar type http://localhost:901/. This will open the Samba SWAT main page.

[Slyke]

Hmmm... i take it this is not good?

[root@localhost ~]# service xinetd start
xinetd: unrecognized service
[root@localhost ~]# chkconfig swat on
error reading information on service swat: No such file or directory

I'm about 2 hours from getting Fedora 8... i'm just going to format and install that. Though, good lessons learned here. Though if you get this fixed, it will help in the future.