Updated 20-Sep-2023
If one wants to say, stream video or music from a file system, but using a different computer. This is not difficult with Samba (aka CIFS) on Linux. Using apps like VLC on Google TV will allow connectivity to the drive over the network.
Install and Configure SMB
sudo apt install samba
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
At the end of the file, add:
[directory share name]
path = /media/user/external-drive-name
writeable = yes
valid users = username1, username2
read only = no
browsable = yes
Note that changing writeable and read only to no and yes, respectively, make it so.
Manual USB drive mapping (if needed)
Ensure that path (above) and (below) do match. This code works for a single external USB drive, formatted NTFS, and found at \dev\sdb1:
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/user/external-drive-name -o uid=1000
Enable / Restart smbd service
sudo service smbd restart
Enable Samba on whichever firewall one has, such as:
sudo ufw allow samba
Add Samba users
Samba does not use the Linux user accounts, so one must create users and passwords individually.
sudo smbpasswd -a username
Known issue on Nemo
- Sometimes there is an error message on trying to connect with Nemo to a share that it previously connected to. This is an open bug on Github. Use
killall nemothen restart and it should work again.