Linux Format forums

andrewt · Joined: Sun Jan 20, 2013 6:20 pm Posts: 4

Help! I'm following the article in LXF160 about setting up my Pi as a fileserver. I'm connecting to two usb drives (via a powered hub), but am getting problems with both.

The older one (a 160 gigabyte Classic SL drive from Freecom) does allow me to change directory to its mount point, but won't allow me to change ownership (responds with 'chown: changing ownership of `/mnt/share1': Operation not permitted')

The newer one (a 750 gigabyte My Passport 0740 from Western Digital) won't allow me change directory to its mount point (responds with ''-bash: cd: share2: Permission denied", but does list the files in attempting to change file ownership list, responding with 'chown: changing ownership of `/mnt/share2': Read-only file system'

... and then when I come to trying to use the smbpasswd command to add a linux user account to samba, I get the response '-bash: smbpasswd: command not found'.

I'm using the Raspian operating system.

Can anyone out there help?

Dutch_Master · LXF regular Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:49 am Posts: 2353

Post the contents of the file /etc/fstab (use the code tags!)

nelz · Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:03 am Post subject:

Please post the output from "mount", using code tags as DM asked. I suspect the first is caused by a filesystem that doesn't support permissions, like FAT, while the second sounds like the filesystem is mounted read-only, make an NTFS filesystem mounted using the kernel driver.
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

andrewt · Joined: Sun Jan 20, 2013 6:20 pm Posts: 4

Hello Dutch_Master and nelz. Thank you for your responses Smile

I've posted fstab and mount info below.

I've also posted the bits of the dmesg output from which I got the drive allocations.

Here is the fstab file

nelz · Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 2:17 pm Post subject:

mount shows nothing mounted on /mnt/share[12] but your fstab listing confirms what I suspected about the filesystems. You cannot change ownership on a FAT filesystem, it has no concept of ownership.

The in-kernel NTFS driver only allows reading by default, writing is disabled for a very good reason - it breaks things. The solution is to blacklist the ntfs module and install ntfs-3g, a FUSE filesystem that does support reliable writing.

A better solution, as you are running a Linux file server, is to use proper Linux filesystems like ext4 instead of trying to shoehorn in alien choices. The only reason for using these filesystems would be if you want to be able to unplug the drivers from the file server and connect them directly to a Window box, which rather misses the point of a file server.
_________________
Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

andrewt · Joined: Sun Jan 20, 2013 6:20 pm Posts: 4

Thanks again nelz!

I will take your advice and reformat the NTFS one to ext4 once I've found somewhere to copy the files already on that device.

Meanwhile, I've sorted the 'mount' problem (I'd got the VFAT and NTFS formats the wrong way round in fstab, doh!) so I should now be able to share the VFAT drive using samba.

Can you help me with my samba problem too? I've installed the latest verson of samba (sudo apt-get install samba), when I try to run the smbpasswd command that Graham suggests, I get the response '-bash: smbpasswd: command not found'.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong this time?

andrewt · Joined: Sun Jan 20, 2013 6:20 pm Posts: 4

I've found the problem. Using 'sudo aptitude search' I got a listing of the installed packages in my Pi, and compared with the equivalent listing on my (Mint14) netbook. Lo and behold, the obvious difference was that the 'samba-common-bin' package was missing from my Pi.

So, I've done a 'sudo apt-get install samba-common-bin' on my Pi, and I can now run the 'smbpasswd' command.

Thought I'd provide this update, just in case anyone else is having the same difficulties

Smile