Windows 7 with Dockstar and Debian

Long story short, my brain is fried on this thing. I love the stock Dockstar for plugging in storage and being able to see on the network. I don't use pogo service. I wanted to try Debian because I want to do things like schedule backups to secondary storage, use Samba shares ( I think?!) , then later possibly add OpenVPN and BitTorrent, maybe media server.

The problem is seeing USB media in Windows. First, Windows 7 keeps prompting me for a user. I have tried every imaginable domain\user\password combo. I have an OpenMediaVault system which I've also as of yet been unable to access via Samba so I don't know what's going on.

I see posts like NTLM this/this/that/other thing but is it really this complicated? I guess I really want something as simple as the plug and play of the stock Dockstar but with more features. How is this possible with Debian?

Thank you.

Matt

Have you tried to create a samba share that does not require username/password and access it from Win 7? something like below. If the USB drive is mounted under /media then it should be accessible from Win 7.

root@debian:~# tail /etc/samba/smb.conf
[media]
comment = shared localdisk
path = /media
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
guest ok = yes

I will give that a try. I had done some changes based on a couple guides but will try that. That file is rather large and unfamiliar territory! I wish there was a nice Ubuntu GUI or something. Anyone know what service or method the stock Dockstar uses to share in Windows?

I'm getting there. Playing with pmount scripts here rather than usbmount. The Samba attempts are not working yet as when I go to the IP address within windows, it automatically prompts me. The boilerplate Samba conf was very long so I blew a lot away. However, I do see my Home directory when I do login and can read/write. I can't see the shared drive, however, and have tried logging in a user via ssh and going to the folder and that doesn't work either so I guess if that can be fixed, that's half the battle.

When I finally do get pmount/samba working, do I need something like hd-idle to spin down drives during idle periods? Also, I've tried service restart for Samba and samba reload. Any preference on what to do when changing the config?

Here is my smb.conf:

[global]
netbios name = Network
wins support = yes
# security = user
# unix password sync = yes

log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 1000

syslog = 0
panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d

[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no
read only = no
writeable = yes
create mask = 0700
directory mask = 0700
valid users = %S

[media]
comment = USB Drive
path = /media
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0700
valid users = %S



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2012 09:53PM by DockMatt.

Indeed! if you can see your home directory then your USB drive was just probably not mounted correctly. Try to manually mount it under /media for now to see if it will be shared. Whenever you change smb.conf, restart samba is enough
/etc/init.d/samba restart

Also, check this thread for automounting USB drives (see the last few posts):
http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,3910