Installing Samba on the Pogoplug

The Pogoplug can be turned into a dedicated Samba server by following the steps below.


1. PREREQUISITES
As a prerequisite of this article, please complete the steps described in my previous post here in order to prepare your Pogoplug so you can install packages using the IPKG package management system.


2. INSTALLING THE SAMBA PACKAGE
To install the Samba server, SSH to your Pogoplug and perform the following:

# Install samba server
/opt/bin/ipkg install samba2

3. CONFIGURING THE SAMBA SERVER
The Samba server should now be installed.  At this point we need to modify the configuration file.  Perform the following:

# Navigate to the samba config directory
cd /opt/etc/samba/
# Backup the default configuration file
cp smb.conf smb.conf.backup
# Edit the configuration file
vi smb.conf

My config file is as follows (you can copy, paste, edit as required):

[global]
workgroup = PARKNET
server string = Pogoplug Samba2 Server
hosts allow = 192. 127.
null passwords = yes
guest account = root
log file = /opt/var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
security = share
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /opt/etc/samba/smbpasswd
dns proxy = no
preserve case = yes
 
[HD1]
comment = HD1
path = /tmp/.cemnt
available = yes
public = yes
writable = yes
printable = no
create mask = 0777
guest ok = yes
browseable = yes

3. RUNNING THE SAMBA SERVER
To start the Samba, run the following:

# Start the Samba Server
/opt/etc/init.d/S80samba start

If all goes according to plan, you should be able to perform the following (from a Windows PC):

  • Go to the Run prompt (Windows key + r)
  • Type “\pogoplug” and press enter (where pogoplug is replaced with the IP address of your device)
  • If prompted, enter your root username and password to authenticate
You should now be able to browse your device from Windows Explorer, map drives as network shares etc.




106 Comments

  1. This works wonderfully, though it may be worth noting that (I assume) as this is using Samba version 2.x, it will only handle file transfers smaller than around 2GB. Attempting to copy a file any bigger than this will cause issues as apparently the free space on the drive is incorrectly reported. I tried following this guide, and a couple of others on line, and attempted to install Samba 3.5, however it looks like the Pogoplug doesn't have enough free memory for this to work.In general use, this installation is fine however. Thanks again Aaron 🙂

  2. Thanks for direct instructions on installing Samba on Pogoplug. I've been searching for such clean and precise steps with explanations that you have given. Have you thought about describing how to install Netatalk or AFP for Time Machine support on the Pogoplug for Mac Users?

  3. Hi Anonymous :)Thanks for the great feedback. I haven't used AFP, but if it is something you are interested in I could always investigate and maybe write my next blog post about it?Cheers,Aaron

  4. Aaron, you are amazing. After months and months of trying to find a good tutorial i finally gave up. It was just today that I decided to give it another go and I seem to be doing much better with your guides so thank you! A few questions I have are VERY noob as I have never dabbled in terminal until this pogo plug, and up to this point it has been copy past :)1.I am using a mac so editing the smb.conf doesn't make sense. Do mac's use a workgroup? also my ip's are 10.0.x.x because i am using a time capsule. how should my smb.conf file look? Any thoughts?2. My main objective is to get my pp streaming content from a connected HDD to my jailbroken Apple TV. (i know i am an Apple fan boy) I have xbmc and a few other programs like it installed. Have you tried anything like that before?3. And last I would like to access my media from anywhere by streaming and not have to download it like you would through my.pogoplug.com. is that what all of this will accomplish? Thank you for your time in reading this lengthy post. You are an inspiration to all of us noobs out there 🙂

  5. old post but maybe some traffic…by saying smaller than 2GB to transfer, does that also mean 2GB or smaller to stream to xbmc or another program like it?

  6. Hi Dan-I-el!Thanks very much for your kind words! In response to your questions:1. You can probably ignore the workgroup settings – I haven't found them to affect whether I can access the drive from a Mac. To allow access from your IP address range, you will want to set the "hosts allow" line to something like:hosts allow = 10.That should allow everything from within your network to access the drive.2. I haven't tried this setup, but XBMC should probably work (via UPnP) if you enable the settings as described in this post: http://www.pogoplugged.com/article/13369/How-To-Enable-Pogoplug-Media-Streaming-to-your-XBOX-360-PS3-or-FreeAgent-Theatre/3. Yes, this does allow for that. Installing Samba allows for mapping the HD connected to the Pogoplug as a shared network drive (without the use of the Pogoplug software). It's worth noting that the Samba setup described above will not work with the very latest version of OS X (Apple disabled access to older Samba shares due to security concerns). If you are running the latest version of OS X, you will probably want to install the Pogoplug software (available from here – http://download.pogoplug.com/install/mac/pogoplugbrowser.pkg) instead of following the tutorial and installing Samba. This will allow for accessing your Pogoplug drive(s) without having to download files via my.pogoplug.com, and works with the latest version of OS X.Let me know how it goes :)Cheers,Aaron

  7. The mini has always been a fine manihce in my opinion, even if they were gimped a bit in the begining by absurdly slow, 4200rpm hard drives. I just wish Apple would release a mini with a high end graphics card (or a user accessible PCI-E slot). It would make a yummy little gaming manihce in a super small foot print that would be the envy of the LAN party.

  8. Gian

    For OS X Lion users.
    Lion has upgraded the smb protocol stack and is using a more secure authentication procedure, to deprecate Lion’s smb security protocol back down to Snow Leopard’s level, use the following command:
    sudo sysctl -w net.smb.fs.kern_deprecatePreXPServers=0

    (the command needs to be run in a terminal window everytime Lion boots)

    To restore the smb protocol stack back to Lion’s original state either reboot or run in a terminal window:
    sudo sysctl -w net.smb.fs.kern_deprecatePreXPServers=1

    IT WORKS! 🙂

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi Gian,

      Brilliant, thanks for the info! I’ve been having memory issues with the Pogoplug app for Mac, so will be very handy to use Samba instead.

      I think this is worthy of a new blog post 🙂

      Aaron

  9. Josh

    Aaron, Thanks for the concise instruction that doesn’t kill the current my.pogoplug.com capability and doesn’t require booting into an external USB . May I request another instruction to add DLNA?

    One question: re: Network Sharepath = /tmp/.cemnt Is this supposed to cover all 4 USB ports? Do I see one server called HD1, and I would see all 4 USB drives as separate directories once I connect to HD1? Or, is this an example of using only one USB port, and I would have to replicate HD1, HD2, HD3, HD4?

    I’ve never understood how mnt_sda1, sdb1, and so on are associated with which USB physical ports, with commands such as path = /tmp/.cemnt/mnt_sda1/ . Your instruction does not use the specific sda1 and so on…

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi Josh,

      Yes that’s right, the /tmp/.cemnt sharepath should cover all USB ports. My “HD1” naming convention doesn’t make that very clear – I labelled it that way as I only have one 1TB HD attached.

      With regards to a uPnP server, it looks like there is a package available with IPKG:

      /opt/bin/ipkg list | grep ushare
      ushare – 1.1a-2 – A free UPnP A/V Media Server for Linux.

      I’ve found the built-in support for streaming to Xbox along with Samba covers my needs; what are you trying to achieve with this?

      Thanks,

      Aaron

      • Josh

        Thanks for the answer on the sharepath to cover all USB ports.

        The built-in support for streaming to Xbox & PS3 is not full DLNA, and thus, many other DLNA devices, such as smart TVs, BRplayers, DLNA android apps are not supported. I did confirm, however, that my WD Live is supported. I guess I’ll just live with this, then.

        Thanks,

      • Josh

        Aaron,
        I followed the instruction closely. I could see the server “pogoplug”, but could not access anything inside. Now, after I’ve added the user abcd, and I can now see the share “HD1”.

        Pogoplug:/opt/etc/samba$ adduser abcd
        adduser: /home/abcd: No such file or directory
        passwd: no record of abcd in /etc/shadow, using /etc/passwd
        Changing password for abcd
        New password:
        Bad password: too short
        Retype password:
        Password for abcd changed by root

        The smb.conf file refers to smbpasswd, so I tried below. It doesn’t seem to make any difference.

        Pogoplug:/opt/etc/samba$ smbpasswd -a abcd
        -bash: smbpasswd: command not found

        Pogoplug:/opt/etc/samba$ cat /etc/passwd > /opt/etc/samba/smbpasswd

        Most importantly, though, under HD1, I do not see my intended USB drive. Rather, I see this.

        hbplug.log
        resolv.conf
        /var
        dropbear.pid
        xcehbplug

        How do I see my other USB drive?

        • Aaron (Author)

          Hi Josh,

          Please send through a copy of your smb.config, as well as the output of “df -h” (via my contact page), and I’ll take a look at this 🙂

          Cheers,

          Aaron

          • Josh

            V2 POGO-E02 I changed “HD1” to “Pogo1” in smb.conf, and rebooted.

            Pogoplug:~$ df -h
            Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
            /dev/mtdblock2 32.0M 17.1M 14.9M 53% /
            none 125.0M 12.0k 125.0M 0% /tmp
            /tmp/.cemnt/sda1 243.7M 32.8M 210.9M 13% /tmp/.cemnt/mnt_sda1
            /tmp/.cemnt/sdb1 149.0G 104.7G 44.4G 70% /tmp/.cemnt/mnt_sdb1

            ###sda1 is the flash drive where the pkg is. sdb1 is what I want to use with samba share. after reboot, I mount /opt again, and here’s smb.conf.

            Pogoplug:~$ mount /tmp/.cemnt/sda1 /opt
            Pogoplug:~$ cat /opt/etc/samba/smb.conf
            [global]
            workgroup = WORKGROUP
            server string = Pogoplug_Samba2
            hosts allow = 192.168.
            null passwords = yes
            guest account = root
            log file = /opt/var/log/samba/log.%m
            max log size = 50
            security = share
            encrypt passwords = yes
            smb passwd file = /opt/etc/samba/smbpasswd
            dns proxy = no
            preserve case = yes

            [Pogo1]
            comment = Pogo1
            Network Sharepath = /tmp/.cemnt
            available = yes
            public = yes
            writable = yes
            printable = no
            create mask = 0777
            guest ok = yes
            browseable = yes
            Pogoplug:~$ /opt/etc/init.d/S80samba start
            Starting smbd:
            Starting nmbd:

            ### I think I did everything expected. Now, I see the server “pogoplug”, but there is no share inside. I cannot even get to the point prior to the reboot… What am I missing? 🙂

          • Aaron (Author)

            Hi Josh,

            Apologies, I’ve just checked through the example smb.config in this post and it looks like I may have accidentally removed a line break at some point.

            Anyway, hopefully it’s an easy fix for you – change the following line:

            Network Sharepath = /tmp/.cemnt

            to:

            path = /tmp/.cemnt

            Restart the Samba service and see if that works. Let me know 🙂

            Aaron

          • Josh

            Hi, Aaron, I’ve removed “Network Share” and tried the “path = /tmp/.cemnt” as well as “path = /tmp/.cemnt/sdb1”, but the result is the same; no share visible inside pogoplug server… Does it have anything to do with the username and password? You haven’t said anything about setting such things, yet smb.conf has mentions… I don’t know; just asking…

  10. Raj

    I found that when I installed samba today, a lib was missing. Googling suggested the library is not packaged with samba but can be installed via:

    ipkg install libnsl

    I have managed to get samba running but I am not able to browse to it (from a win 7 box) yet.

  11. Josh

    Hi, Aaron, Let me correct myself. With Mac, nothing shows under pogoplug server, but in Windows, it works!!! I see the share mnt_sda1 and mnt_sdb1 and it works. I think it may have something to do with the samba share password. Samba is supposed to work under both Mac and Windows. Do you know how to set that? Also, if possible, I’d like to set the samba password for Windows, as well… Thanks you; You’ve helped me so much already.

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi Josh,

      I’m glad to hear you’ve got it working with Windows.

      Which version of Mac OSX are you running?

      One thing you could try is to run the following command in the Mac Terminal:

      sudo sysctl -w net.smb.fs.kern_deprecatePreXPServers=0

      and then attempt to reconnect to the Pogoplug. This command will allow the Mac to make use of an older version of the Samba protocol.

      Also, it may be worth reposting your updated smb.config so we can look over your current configuration.

      I haven’t worked through setting up a password with Samba, but the smb.conf MAN page may help shed some light: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~rgm/cirsi/samba/docs/man/smb.conf.html

      I’d suggest we try and get the Mac connected to the Pogoplug before attempting to setup passwords 🙂

      Cheers,

      Aaron

  12. Frank

    First off I’m a Linux noob so I have multiple browsers open reading up on the proper syntax for hopefully resolving this issue.

    I have a Pogoplug v4 and I’ve already run through the exercises to get it prepared to deploy packages. When trying to setup Samba and start the service I’m getting the following error when i run /opt/etc/init.d/S80samba start
    Starting smbd:
    /opt/sbin/smbd: error while loading shared libraries: libnsl.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    Starting nmbd:
    /opt/sbin/nmbd: error while loading shared libraries: libnsl.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    I’ve tried looking for libnsl.so.1 using grep -rl ‘libnsl.so.1’ /opt* but have not be able to find the file anywhere in the file system. Althought it looks like its inside many other files within /opt/bin/. I don’t know if if didn’t get properly extracted to the correct location. Any advise or guidance would be very helpful.

    I would love to be able to access this device natively through explorer.

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi Frank,

      Try installing libsnl:

      ipkg install libnsl

      And then restart Samba to see if that resolves the issue.

      Let me know how it goes 🙂

      Aaron

      • Frank

        Thank you for the quick response I’ll try it today and let you know if that fixed it.

        By the way, I appreciate the hard work you’ve done in documenting this process, I have been searching the net for walkthroughs like this for some time and I have found yours to be the best documented and helpful.

        thanks,
        Frank

      • Frank

        Aaron, I tried running the command and here are the results. I states that ipkg is not found. Should I be running this under a paticular directory? I ‘ve tried runing it under sveral different directories with the same error.

        /opt/bin # -sh: ipkg: not found
        -sh: -sh:: not found

        • Aaron (Author)

          Hi Frank,

          Did you install Samba using my instructions? And have you rebooted since doing so?

          Cheers,

          Aaron

          • Frank

            Yes, I restarted the PP but the error persists. I re-ran Samba install and it returned that it was already successully installed.
            /opt # /opt/bin/ipkg install samba2
            Package samba2 (2.2.12-4) installed in root is up to date.
            Nothing to be done
            Successfully terminated.

            I tried running libnsl install again and it returned the same error.
            /opt/bin # -sh: ipkg: not found
            -sh: -sh:: not found
            .I’m not sure why its saying that ipkg is not installed. Curious error.

          • Frank

            I formated the usb stick and started from scratch. I am able to make it all the way to last step under section ‘If you DO NOT have version “BusyBox v1.7.0″ (e.g. “BusyBox v1.16.1″)’
            I can run all commands except “ipkg install libnsl ”
            it fails with “-sh: ipkg: not found”. When I do ls -l ipkg is listed under /opt/bin. I have restarted the PP which didn’t resolve anything i still get the same error.

          • Frank

            Aaron thank you for all your help. I did some serious linux study this evening and got it working. There were several files that i had to manually copy/rename/move in order to get it working. I am know transferring files using my new, Always on, Pogoplug/Samba server and I’m getting 30MB/s trasfer rates! The only thing I can’t figure out is how to force it to require authentication. I changed smb.conf “null passwords = no” but it still just lets me right into the shares.

    • Thorsten

      some hints
      you have probably to reinstall libnsl
      via command
      1.
      /opt/bin/ipkg install libnsl -force-reinstall

      Then restart smb
      2.
      /opt/etc/init.d/S80samba start

  13. AJ

    Hey Aaron,
    I dunno if you still read the comments for this but I followed your steps and pogomarvel’s but I can’t connect to my drive from windows. Every time I try to enter my password root to the drive it won’t connect do you know if there is another password I should be using or if I can reset it. It’s funny because I can ssh into the pogoplug perfectly fine but when I UNC into the pogoplug (\\pogoplug or ip 192.168.1.10) it asks me for a username and password like any windows share so I enter
    USERNAME: pogoplug\root
    PASSWORD: ***************
    it won’t connect and it will just pop up the password box.again
    Thanks for the blog post and any help you can provide me.

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi AJ,

      If you post (or send through the contact form) your samba config file I’ll take a look and see if we can fix this for you 🙂

      Cheers,

      Aaron

  14. Eurides

    Hi Aaron – I followed your directions but I’m stuck at the last part; running the server i get segmentation faults.

    /tmp # df -h
    Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
    ubi0:rootfs 97.0M 13.1M 83.9M 14% /
    none 57.9M 12.0K 57.9M 0% /tmp
    /tmp/.cemnt/sda 7.5G 9.5M 7.5G 0% /tmp/.cemnt/mnt_sda
    /tmp/.cemnt/mmcblk0p1
    1.9G 24.0M 1.8G 1% /opt
    /tmp # /opt/etc/init.d/S80samba start
    Starting smbd:
    Segmentation fault
    Starting nmbd:
    Segmentation fault

    [global]
    workgroup = WORKGROUP
    server string = Samba
    hosts allow = 192.168.
    null passwords = yes
    guest account = root
    log file = /opt/var/log/samba/log.%m
    max log size = 50
    security = share
    encrypt passwords = yes
    smb passwd file = /opt/etc/samba/smbpasswd
    dns proxy = no
    preserve case = yes

    [Pogo1]
    comment = Pogo1
    Network Sharepath = /tmp/.cemnt/
    available = yes
    public = yes
    writable = yes
    printable = no
    create mask = 0777
    guest ok = yes
    browseable = yes

    Please help…

  15. Justyn

    These are really useful instructions and having followed them for my Pro I now have everything working. Cool. I also used http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Optware/Samba2 to help and installed the latest libnsl pkg from the repository to smooth some of the issues.

    However, has anyone got this working with Mountain Lion? MS XP – yes; iOS – yes; OS X – no

    Will Samba 3 work on a Pro using a USB stick mounted as /Opt?

  16. Gabriel

    Frank,

    I am having the same issue you had, what files did you have to copy/rename/move and how?
    Thanks in advance

  17. Dalsim

    Hello Aaron,

    This is an awesome guide! Thank you so much for putting it together. I have tried other guides with no success as I was always getting stuck with sharing external hard drives to my windows machines but your guide worked nicely.

    I was wondering if there is a way to get Samba to autostart when the Pogo is turned on? So I do not need to SSH in and start Samba manually?

    Also, at the moment, if I eject a drive and add a different drive, the route changes and whichever drive is attached gets the next sequential name, so if I have 1 drive attached and it shows on my share as ‘mnt_sda1’ if I detatch it and attach a different drive, the next time I attach the 1st drive it takes on a different name. Do you know of a way I can make a hard drive have the same route name, so when I attach and detatch drives, the route stays the same? So, for example, XBMC can still find all my media on that drive?

    Thanks again Aaron.

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi Dalsim,

      No problem, glad it worked for you 🙂

      Unfortunately I don’t know of a way to automatically start Samba at boot. I did discuss it in another blog post, and can suggest the following:

      OPTION 1: Create a bash script to start your manually installed services. Something like:

      # Create a startup script
      touch /etc/startup.sh
      # Edit the startup script
      vi /etc/startup.sh

      Then you could add the following to the startup.sh contents:
      # Mount the spare internal flash drive
      mount -o remount,rw /
      mount /dev/mtdblock3 /opt
      # Start whatever services you require below, e.g. Samba, Transmission, etc

      After each reboot you would simply SSH onto the Pogoplug and run the following:

      /etc/startup.sh

      OPTION 2: (NOT RECOMMENDED) Edit the startup bash script, found at “/etc/init.d/rcS”. You could add the contents of startup.sh (above) into this script, then your services will start automatically when the Pogoplug boots.I don’t recommend this method – if you make a typo in the rcS file, you could find that your Pogoplug will not boot.

      Based on how often you need to reboot your Pogoplug (I’m guessing not that often?), I would go with the first suggestion. I think there are also issues with drives not necessarily being mounted when the rcS file is run.

      Hope that helps,

      Aaron

  18. Dalsim

    Hi Aaron,

    Ok, I will try option 1, although I was hoping I could just power on the Pogo and it would be accessible on Samba without having to turn on any computers and ssh in, but you are right, I should rarely need to reboot or shutdown the Pogo anyways, so maybe it will be ok.

    Thanks again for the help though. The guide you made has been such a big help!

    Dalsim

  19. bob bart

    So far so good. Now my only problem is that if I turn off the power, I have to restart the samba.

    I have heard of modifying the RCS file, but that could brick the unit….and I know that from experience. So there is an easy way. And you dont need to go through the puty steps of login..and then running the scripts.

    My only solution was to write a bat file that contained 3 lines to SSH plink commands that first login to the unit with login and password. Then next to each line is each one of the startup samba command lines to first remount and then start samba.
    To do this simply use the following command in your batch file. Tried to run it with 3 commands for one plink..but had to do each one separate

    Replace {SSH USERNAME} with you username. Replace {SERVER IP} with the servers IP address. Replace {PASSWORD} with the the appropriate password. Replace {COMMAND} with the command you would like to send to the server.

    plink -v -ssh {SSH USERNAME}@{SERVER IP} -pw {PASSWORD} {COMMAND}

    plink …….login info……………..mount -o remount,rw /
    plink……..login info……………..mount /dev/mtdblock3 /opt
    plink……..login info…………..# Start whatever services you require below, e.g. Samba, Transmission, etc

  20. Luis Brenes

    Cool Guide I have the V4 and there were some changes I had to do during the prerequisites but I got it working now:

    @ frank: you need to run ipkg using the full path meaning /opt/bin/ipkg install libnsl
    otherwise it wont work

    @Andy Bailey: the problem is the TMP folder, whatever that folder is being use by samba as a “buffer” folder so the size of the TMP folder will be the biggest file size that you can transfer via Samba

    As per MAC besides the workaround already presented you can install SAMBA36 that one is supported by Lion I have tried to move the tmp folder to my 2gig sdcard but I haven’t been successful so far.

  21. Jan Peter

    Dear Aaron, dear all,

    thanks Aaron for this SPECTACULAR guide. Worked out of the box for me. Well, I do have two small issues:

    1) Being a linux noob I followed your instruction line to line, Now, in Windows (Win7 Prof), I can easily access my harddsisk (yes two) which are connected to the pogo. However, no password was requested and all files are just visible/modifyable to all network members. Any Samba Idea why that is?
    2) To fasten things up I followed your idea here (answer to Dalsim) to create a “startup.sh” batch file. Again I copy-pasted your instructions. However, once I SSH into the pogo after reboot and I execute this sh file it only says “Permission denied”. Any idea why that might be???

    thanks again! Hope you find some time to let me know.

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hey Jan,

      Thanks 🙂

      Where is your script stored? And what are the permissions on it (“ls -lah /path/to/script”)?

      “sudo /path/to/script” usually fixes permission issues, but I’d like to understand why you’re seeing that issue.

      Cheers,

      Aaron

  22. David

    Jan,

    chmod 0755 startup.sh

    to make it executable….

  23. Mike

    Thanks a lot for the guide!

    I’m trying to use the samba functionalities and possibly the native dlna capability without being connected to pogoplug.com.

    I used killall hbwd but it shutdown everything. I can’t even mount drives anymore. Is this supposed to happen? Is there a way I can achieve above other than just ejecting the drive from the pogoplug website? Thanks.

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi Mike,

      Why do you want to block pogoplug.com? The Samba functionality will work regardless of whether the device is connected (and mounted) to Pogoplug’s servers.

      Cheers,

      Aaron

  24. Mike

    Tried installing ushare.

    Upon starting, got
    “error while loading shared libraries: libavdevice.so.52: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”

    Seems like from looking around that this library or ushare is old. Is there a way to fix this?

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi Mike,

      Not that I’m aware of. I’ve tried various DLNA servers available from IPKG, but with no luck. It’s something I’m working on though; Pogoplug have removed streaming functionality to the XBox without buying a multi-user license. Very annoying, but hopefully I’ll find a work-around.

      Thanks,

      Aaron

  25. Daniel Stevenson

    Hi Aaron

    I didn’t need any assistance from you but really appreciate you publishing the steps to install samba. Got it working. Many thanks!
    Daniel

  26. john

    i’m following your instructions for installing samba on the pogoplug
    when i run ipkg update it completes successfully when i go to ipkg install samba2 i get

    Nothing to be done
    An error ocurred, return value: 4.
    Collected errors:
    Cannot find package samba2.
    Check the spelling or perhaps run ‘ipkg update’

    if i run the ipkg list the samba2 package is not listed – what is the correct path to put in the config file to point to the packages?

  27. Hey Aaron,

    Still very happy with my Pogoplug purchase thanks in part to you and your tutorials. I have one device in my setup that refuses to play nice. It’s my softmodded Wii with WiiMC Media Player. WiiMC has the ability to access SMB shares, and I can connect it to my computer, but it doesn’t like something about the Pogoplug SMB setup.

    I summarize my journey for a fix in this post (http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1566&p=6909&hilit=smb+linux+conf#p6909) where I chime in about half way down as cdlenfert. It’s not very long and I thought I might save reposting it here. Seems to be a ghost town over there at least in term of SMB help.

    It may be that using Samba2 is going to make streaming to Wii impossible, but I thought you might be able to confirm that.

  28. voodoodaddy

    Just got a Pogo-v4. Not to happy with the purchase out of the box, but thanks for posting these awesome instructions. I’m a Linux super-noob, so before I break this thing, can you confirm that the Pogo running Samba should be able to stream music to my Sonos player using SMB protocol? This is after all why I bought the dumb thing… Do any of your instructions need to be tweaked for the v4?
    Thanks for the advice!

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hey Voodoodaddy,

      Unfortunately I have no idea if this will work with a Sonos player, but I’d hope so! My instructions should work for the newer V4 Pogoplugs (but you’ll probably need an external USB stick.

      Let me know how you get on 🙂

      Aaron

  29. Jorge

    Hi Aaron,

    First of all thanks for all your help!!!! Amazing work!!!!
    I just want to know if its possible to share a HFS+ formatted drive trough SAMBA.

    Thanks in advance for your help.

  30. Peter

    Thanks much for these instructions. I’ve had this working great on my Mac 10.68 computer, and it has made home networking so much easier. However, I just got a different macbook with 10.8.3 Mountain Lion, and I’m getting the message “the version of the server you are trying to connect to is not supported” when I try to connect to my pogoplug. I’ve tried smb://user:pwd@192.168.1.67 and smb://192.168.1.67 with the same result. Research on this topic is proving fruitless. Any thoughts?

    • Aaron (Author)

      Hi Peter,

      With Mountain Lion, Apple disabled support for older Samba protocols. You should be able to manually enable it by entering the following into your Mac Terminal:

      sudo sysctl -w net.smb.fs.kern_deprecatePreXPServers=0

      This needs to be done on each boot, so maybe you could create an AppleScript to do that automatically for you.

      Let me know how you get on 🙂

      Aaron

      • Peter

        Thanks for the reply. That is a fix for Lion, but not Mountain Lion. That command returns:
        net: class is not implemented
        when typed (copied!) into the Terminal.
        I think I’ll eventually try installing samba3 and see if 10.8 likes that.

        • Aaron (Author)

          Hey Peter,

          Whoops, read your post too quickly! Unfortunately I have no idea about Mountain Lion, I’ve reverted to using the Pogoplug App to handle mounting the drives on my Mac because of this. It hasn’t been too painful for me – sleeping the computer means I rarely have to re-enter my details into the Pogoplug software.

          Cheers,

          Aaron

  31. Tom

    Hi Aaron,

    Thanks for this excellent instruction. I am new to Linux. But I can make it work.

    Only one problem is that I have some files with Chinese character file name. There are wrong encoding or something make it not display properly when look from windows WinXP explore. And you can not access those files with Chinese name as well. Any idea what should check or set so it can display properly? Thanks a lot.

  32. Tom

    Aaron,

    Thanks for the excellent guide. I made the Samba server working even this is my first time play the Linux. I think many people will be benefit from your instruction.

    But one problem is that I have some file with Chinese name on hard disk. The files are created under WinXP. When I attach the disk on Pogoplug, all the Chinese file name become some “code”. But if I browse through “my.pogoplug”, everything is fine. I tried to set the following in the smb.conf

    display charset = UTF-8
    unix charset = UTF-8

    But it dose not work. Any idea that we can get it work. Thanks a lot.

  33. Thomas Bollaert

    I’ve been using my samba2 server on the pogoplug for more than a month now, thanks to this guide. Everything is going smoothly, but one thing keeps bugging me, and so far I have yet to find a solution.

    Sometimes, when I try to copy large files (over 7GB) from my windows 7 desktop to my fileserver, windows immediately reports that there is not enough space on the drive, which is not true. In the end, there is a file copied which is 0kb in size.

    Is there anyone else who has the same problem and has found a solution to solve it?

    Thanks in advance

    This problem seems to be the same one that Andy Bailey (see a few posts above mine.

    Thanks in advance!

  34. marc

    wonderfully useful!

  35. Dave

    I was looking at getting a pogoplug v4, and setting it up a Samba server. Does anyone know if I can use these instructions on that version? and what type of transfer speeds I would be able to get?

  36. Bala

    Excellent worked in first shot. great tutorial.

  37. David

    Thomas Bollaert – Samba2 only supports files up to 2GB.

  38. David K

    Hi Aaron

    Thank for the great tutorial, I have samba working on my PP pro only when I access it with my mac it reports free space only 64mb even when I have a 1tb drive attached.

    Any help would be appreciated

  39. MD

    Hi,

    I did all those steps without errors, but when I try to map the drive using Windows (\ mypogoplug IP) it says that the network drive doesn’t exists.
    I’m using windows 7, an 1 Gb flashdrive and a Pogoplug V4.
    I know that is hard to imagine what could be wrong, but maybe you can help me with common mistakes or something like that.

    Tks

  40. Pieter

    Hi Aaron!

    I’m having a recent issue with the pogoplug (and samba).
    My XBMC doesn’t recognise the samba share anymore (neither does my macbook pro or my windows laptop)

    I’ve tried restarting the pogoplug, but now I see that it doesn’t even follow the instructions in the rcS anymore… Pogoplug starts up fine, but there are things in there it should do and isn’t doing:

    mount -t proc none /proc
    mount -t sysfs none /sys
    mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
    mount -t tmpfs none /tmp
    mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usb
    mkdir /tmp/var

    echo “/tmp/core_%e_%t” > /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern

    hostname pogoplug => it doesn’t take a hostname, pinging pogoplug does nothing

    ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
    ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.147 netmask 255.255.255.0 => it still keeps it’s DHCP adress (192.168.0.142)
    route add default gw 192.168.0.1
    nameserver 8.8.8.8
    udhcpc -b `hostname`

    #telnetd
    /etc/init.d/db
    /etc/init.d/hbmgr.sh start
    #/bin/mount -a
    mount -o remount,rw /
    mount /dev/mtdblock3 /opt
    /opt/bin/transmission-daemon –config-dir /opt/config/transmission-daemon/
    /opt/etc/init.d/S80samba start

    And the instructions to start samba and transmission aren’t executed.

    It’s really weird. It has always worked, but now I don’t really know what to do :/

  41. Joe L

    Last week my windows 7 laptop stopped connecting to my pogoplug samba. Previously it had worked fine with the setup from this site. Everything still works on my linux computers. Did something change in windows which is causing the problem. The windows 7 computer still sees the pogoplug and the HD1 share, but when I try to open the share I get a “\\192.168.1.8\hd1\ not accessible” error. Has anyone else experienced this problem.

  42. bob bart

    My problem with Windows 7 is that when I run the bat file to get the Samba running on E02 pogoplug it takes a while before it shows up as a network drive. Sometimes 10 minutes or what I do is reboot and I see it.

  43. bob bart

    socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=65536 SO_SNDBUF=65536

    add this to your global file as ONE line. This really speeds up pogoplug…now I can see it in windows faster. It use to take time to see the pogoplug..but now I can see it faster….the 65536 value can be changed…but it appears to be the recommended value that other have tested per the blogs

    seems quicker…read blog from here https://calomel.org/samba.html

    socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=65536 SO_SNDBUF=65536 are specifically speed up options for samba to windows connectivity. Socket options are controls on the networking layer of the operating systems which allow the connection to be tuned. This option will typically be used to tune your Samba server for optimal performance for your local network. There is no way that Samba can know what the optimal parameters are for your net, so you must experiment and choose them yourself. We strongly suggest you read the appropriate documentation for your operating system first (perhaps man setsockopt will help). You may find that on some systems Samba will say “Unknown socket option” when you supply an option. This means you either incorrectly typed it or you need to add an include file to includes.h for your OS. Any of the supported socket options may be combined in any way you like, as long as your OS allows it.

  44. michel

    Hello,
    Great tut but i ran it to the following

    when i run /opt/bin/ipkg install samba2 it gives back
    Nothing to be done
    An error ocurred, return value: 4.
    Collected errors:
    Cannot find package samba2.
    Check the spelling or perhaps run ‘ipkg update’
    but when i do /opt/bin/ipkg update or upgrade the only thing it gives back is successfully terminated
    what can i do to fix samba 2 on my pogo plug V4 A3-01.

  45. Jes

    Hi Aaron,
    Can you help me with this??

    when i run /opt/bin/ipkg install samba2 it gives back
    Nothing to be done
    An error ocurred, return value: 4.
    Collected errors:
    Cannot find package samba2.
    Check the spelling or perhaps run ‘ipkg update’

  46. bob bart

    In regards to the individual hard drives, I set up each one separately. So for 4 hard usb drives, you have 4 of these..HD1, HD2, HD3, HD4. The reason, its sure easier for my WDTV live to access these drives. The only problem is that when you reboot..the location of the drives can change. My other problem is how do I keep the pogoplug live but disconnect or power off the USB drives. Cant do this from windows.

    [HD1]
    comment = HD1
    path = /tmp/.cemnt
    available = yes
    public = yes
    writable = yes
    printable = no
    create mask = 0777
    guest ok = yes
    browseable = yes

  47. Help please. I get all the way to the last step and get this error. ipkg update worked.

    /tmp # /opt/bin/ipkg install libnsl
    Installing libnsl (2.5-4) to root…
    Downloading http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/cs08q1armel/cross/unstable/libnsl_2.5-4_arm.ipk
    ipkg: fork failed
    Segmentation fault

  48. OK please ignore above message I rebooted PP and got it working. Now when I go to start samba I get
    /opt/etc/samba # /opt/etc/init.d/S80samba start
    Starting smbd:
    /opt/sbin/smbd: error while loading shared libraries: libnsl.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    Starting nmbd:
    /opt/sbin/nmbd: error while loading shared libraries: libnsl.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    here is my config
    [Global]
    workgroup = KAUFMAN-HOME
    server string = Pogoplug Samba2 Server
    hosts allow = 192.
    null passwords = yes
    guest account = root
    log file = /opt/var/log/samba/log.%m
    max log size = 50
    security = share
    encrypt passwords = yes
    smb passwd file = /opt/etc/samba/smbpasswd
    dns proxy = no
    preserve case = yes

    [HD1]
    comment = HD1
    path = /tmp/.cemnt
    available = yes
    public = yes
    writable = yes
    printable = no
    create mask = 0777
    guest ok = yes
    browseable = yes

    use yours but changed workgroup and ipaddress

  49. Scotty

    Aaron,

    Great job. I was able to setup my pogoplug using your instruction. I am able to connect from Windows (xp/7/8). I’m also able to connect from my Nexus 7.

    However, I’m not able to access pogoplug from Linux. It sees the server but when I try to access I would get a ‘Failed to retrieve share list from server: Connection timed out’.

    Any idea? I am running a pogo-eg02.

    Thanks

  50. Scotty

    Never mind… I think I figure out what the issue is…

    I was able to access the pogoplug samba via ip…

    It turns out, some how, it is pointing to something else.

    Regards,

  51. Hello Aaron,

    Thanks for these instructions. I am considering buying a “Series 4” (The only model available in my country). I am concerned about Samba 2

    1. Can we install any other version of Samba (which does not have the 2Gb file limit) without replacing the original OS?
    2. With Samba 2, does the 2Gb restriction apply from Pogoplug to other devices, other devices to Pogoplug, or both?
    3. What is the easiest way to make Samba & the torrent client start up automatically at each boot?

  52. Rafael

    Hi,

    I sucessfully installed Samba 3.6 on my Seagate Pogo without using a swapfille (works as long as I don’t install anything else on my pogo), this way I was able to copy files over 2Gb to my Hard Drives.

  53. Mike

    Aaron,

    I was Trying to get the samba server to say “Mike’s-Cloud” and I changed it everywhere.. I noticed that is was coming up on the network as “POGOPLUGMOBILE” in my looking through files I found it in the /etc/init.d/*rcS file “hostname pogoplugmobile” and changed it now the unit no longer boots. (just green flashing light) is there a way to recover from this?

    Thanks,
    Mike

  54. cdlenfert

    Does anyone else who is running a samba server on their pogoplug experience regular crashing of that samba server. The plug itself still functions just fine, but I have to restart my samba server at least once a week. Would love to know a fix or how to remove and re-install samba or even optware overall (i.e. start from scratch)

  55. Chris Booth

    it keeps crashing for me also
    i get a segmentation fault at random times sometimes after a few minutes sometimes a few hours and then i have to restart the tranmission-daemon

    i’m using NTFS drives

    any ideas what i can do to fix this?

  56. Ajmal

    Hi,

    This was really helpful. I did this and now my pogoplug device is accessible with \\pogoplug.
    But I’m facing issue [Windows 7 user] to paste large files. I can paste small sized files but when I try to paste big file of around 1GB [to a 4 GB SD Card] it’s showing there is only ~57 MB left.

    • Rafael

      I faced the same issue and it’s caused by using samba2 on the pogo. You can use samba3 but it’s not recommended if you are running any other service on the pogo.

      I have been running samba3 for over 1 month without any issue and my large .mkv files streams good to my WD devices.

      • Chris

        Hey Rafael, Samba is the only service (aside from the stock Pogoplug services) that I want to run. I have an issue currently with Samba 2 crashing weekly and on later versions of Mac OS X I can’t access the plug via Samba 2. I’d love to make the leap to Samba 3. Any chance you can point me to how it’s done? At one time I had a transmission client, and tried adding an FTP client, so any info on how to whip Optware clean would be good too.

  57. ali

    Aaron,
    Great job man…Really, amazing detailed instructions.

    By the way, I installed a 2GB flash drive & format it, without any problem.

    After Pogoplug went offline, I’m trying to get my large drive on my LAN (1.5 & 3 TB), would Samba support large disk size?

    By the way, the flash drive (on V4) was at sda, would the other USB slots be sdb, sdc, sdd? sda1, sda2, sda3?
    Please help.

    Thanks
    Ali

  58. McKenna

    Hi Aaron,
    Thank you for your informational blog. I have no experience in Linux or software at all but a rational mind :). I have received a PogoPlug E02 and I have connected 4 external HDs to stream music. Pogoplug service is having hick-ups recently (or they are closing shop) so I’ve decided to change it according to your samba instructions. I’ve followed them (without a stick) and now I have access to all 4 drives on my network. There are two things I need 1) How can I rename the drives’ main directories from “mnt_sda1”, “mna_sdb1”, “mna_sdc1” and “mna_sdd1” to something better. 2) Could you paste a script for me to insert via putty to re-mount samba automatically after powering up or re-boot (I didn’t have to use a stick)? I’m lost in ideas above
    Cheers,
    McKenna

    • Chris Lenfert

      Hey McKenna, Aaron hasn’t been responding to this blog post for a while, but as someone who’s benefitted from it personally, I can address your questions. I also have an E02 model. I’m assuming you installed Optware to the internal nand (~100mb) storage. I use a mix of Mac and PC computers on my network, so I’ve upgraded Samba from version 2 (in Aaron’s guide) to 3.6 as Macs are blocking Samba 2 connections. If you are all Windows, you’ll be fine with Samba 2.

      The Pogoplug will always mount the drives at “mnt_sdxx” locations as you know, but there’s no telling which drive will get which location on a given reboot. That obviously makes it’s hard to set up network shares and know which files are on which share. The best guide I found to customize your mount points for each drive and have them stay the same is here – http://www.leeandcathy.com/2011/10/persistent-usb-mount-locations-on.html – To summarize the guide, you are adding some linux tools that can identify your drive by UUID and then creating a script that mounts the drive by UUID to specific points that you decide.

      You end up with lines like this, which find the drive based on it’s UUID and mount it:
      mount `findfs UUID=”xxxXXXXX-XxXx”` /pogo-1
      mount `findfs UUID=”xxxXXXXX-XxXy”` /pogo-2
      etc…

      Since you have optware running on an internal nand, that gets a different mount than the usb drives, so there’s no need to find it’s UUID to mount it as opt. It will mount on opt every time as-is. I have moved my command to mount “mtdblock3” (the internal flash) into my mount script to avoid extra changes to the /etc/init.d/rcS script. On rcS I’ve added 1 line:

      /etc/init.d/chris_mount

      My “chris_mount” script looks like this.

      #________begin script___________
      #!/bin/sh
      # Mounts internal flash as /opt, mounts 500gb as /pogo1, etc. Starts samba.
      #
      mount /dev/mtdblock3 /opt

      sleep 30

      mount `findfs UUID=”A6A0CA0F20419853″` /pogo1
      for num in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9; do
      if /bin/mountpoint /pogo1 -q ; then
      break
      fi
      sleep 1
      done

      mount `findfs UUID=”21E599BF9F0F2CAB”` /pogo2

      for num in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9; do
      if /bin/mountpoint /pogo2 -q ; then
      break
      fi
      sleep 1
      done

      mount `findfs UUID=”31D33977EDB3D009″` /pogo3
      for num in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9; do
      if /bin/mountpoint /pogo3 -q ; then
      break
      fi
      sleep 1
      done

      opt/etc/init.d/S08samba start

      exit 0
      #____________end script__________

      To summarize that file, mount my nand as /opt to run optware. Wait 30 seconds. Mount my first drive based on UUID as “pogo1”, keep trying for a bit, if mounted, mount my next drive, etc…After it’s tried to mount all the drives, start samba.

      All this said, if PogoPlug doesn’t bring back their servers (you’re correct that they are down or bugging out right now) you will only ever have local network access to your drives via Samba. There’s a lot more you can do if you replace the entire OS, but it’s also much more complicated. You can find a massive wealth of knowledge on Doozan forums.

      Last note: if Pogoplug servers don’t come back up permanently, you can save resources on the Pogo by killing the default Pogoplug service as part of your script. Just include “killall hbwd” and you should see more RAM become available.

  59. McKenna

    Hi Chris,
    Looking at the past dates, I wasn’t expecting an answer. So big thanks.
    This gadget proved to be a good source of headache for me so I decided to put it aside and go back to utilizing a USB hub until I can find a practical solution. It can’t handle power cuts at all. It won’t turn its light on after plugging on or off most of the time. As I mentioned, I wasn’t able to add a simple looking “auto-mount” command yet with my very limited knowledge.
    I appreciate for your time and information

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