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Use Samba to Share Files on Raspberry Pi

Table of Contents

Objective

This "recipe" provides a method for sharing files over a local area network. Specifically, this recipe addresses configuring a Raspberry Pi (RPi) as a file server to share a USB thumb drive with clients. Sharing from the perspective of a Mac client is also addressed here; the process for sharing with a Windows or Linux client would be similar.

The USB thumb drive is physically plugged into a USB port on a RPi. The thumb drive's only partition is formatted as an exFAT file system, and this file system is mounted on the RPi. Details for partitioning, formatting and mounting the thumb drive are covered in another recipe. In this recipe we will install and configure Samba on the RPi. The Samba software will provide clients access to the files and folders on the thumb drive via the network.

The reader should know that there are alternative approaches to achieving the objectives outlined above. The approach that follows reflects my opinion of the best option, but others may disagree. You should do your research, and are of course free to choose the approach that works best for you.

Q&A: Why Do This At All?

Answer: Convenience. One could simply unmount the USB thumb drive on the RPi, remove it, and plug it into a USB port on the client. If your RPi is on the other side of your desk, perhaps that's not much convenience. If it's upstairs, or in the garage, or in another country, the convenience is more substantial. Another potential advantage is that Samba effectively translates the thumb drive's native file system format to CIFS - a near-universal standard. For example if the thumb drive were formatted as ext4, it may be difficult-to-impossible for a Mac or Windows client to read and write the thumb drive. As you'll see, it's easier to share using Samba. If you're ready, we'll get started:

1. Check the fstab entry for the external drive

Check that you have a valid mount point - in this case at /home/pi/mntThumbDrv. The entry in etc/fstab will be similar to this:

LABEL=SANDISK16GB /home/pi/mntThumbDrv exfat rw,user,nofail 0 0

You can change this of course; these entries simply follow on the previous recipe for mounting an external drive. You do want the thumb drive/external drive to be auto-mounted if you're using Samba to serve it over the network. Auto-mount is accomplished through the fstab entry.

2. Install Samba:

Before installing Samba, check to make sure it's not already installed:

$ apt-mark showmanual | grep samba
samba
samba-common-bin

If you don't have both of these packages (samba and samba-common-bin) installed, install them as follows:

$ sudo apt-get update
...
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
...
$ sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin 
...

This should complete without error. The output may contain messages about Samba's Domain Controller (DC) feature being "masked". We don't need the DC, so these messages may be ignored.

3. Configure Samba:

3.a Edit the Samba Configuration file

Samba configuration is done through the file etc/samba/smb.conf. Make a backup copy of smb.conf, and use your favorite editor to modify this file as follows:

$ sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bkup
$ sudo pico /etc/samba/smb.conf

Add the following lines to the tail of smb.conf:

[sandisk16gb]
Comment = Shared Folder
Path = /home/pi/mntThumbDrv
Browseable = yes
Writeable = yes
only guest = no
create mask = 0700
directory mask = 0700
force user = pi

The default smb.conf in Raspbian contains a number of settings that are not clear to me. Rather than wade through that, consider downloading and using this minimal smb.conf file. As of this writing, it works on my RPi and supports my Mac client. Alternatively, refer to the Samba project's configuration guide to Setting up Samba as a Standalone Server.

One other item from the configuration file: the [homes] directive under the Share Definitions section implements a feature that you may find useful. If enabled, /home/pi is exported as a Samba share! This only works if you log in as the pi user (as we do here). It's not enabled here, but you may enable it by uncommenting the appropriate lines in smb.conf, beginning with the [homes] directive.

To use this configuration file, complete any edits you wish to make in smb.conf, verify that the backup file you created earlier is still in place, and save the edited file to etc/samba/smb.conf

3.b Add the user pi to Samba's password database file

When we mount the exported Samba share, we'll authenticate as user pi. Samba knows nothing of pi's password under Raspbian, so we'll need to create a password using smbpasswd. I'd recommend you use the same password in Samba that you use in Raspbian, but that's not required. Add pi's Samba password as follows:

$ sudo smbpasswd -a pi 
New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:

3.c A Brief Overview of Samba Permissions

Clicking this link will take you to another page in this repo. It's worth a quick review. After you've looked it over, you can return here by using your browser's Back button.

3.d Restart Samba to read the revised Samba Configuration file

(Re)Start the Samba daemons to read the new smb.conf file:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart 
# OR ALTERNATIVELY IF THAT FAILS (e.g. on stretch)
$ sudo /etc/init.d/smbd restart 
[ ok ] Restarting nmbd (via systemctl): nmbd.service. 
[ ok ] Restarting smbd (via systemctl): smbd.service.

4. Connect to the Samba share:

  • Open a Finder window (or use one that's already open)
  • From keyboard, enter command-k, or click Go, Connect to Server...
  • In the Server Address field enter the URL of your RPi; e.g. cifs://raspberrypi3b.local
  • Authenticate as user pi and password from 3.b above, click Connect

Samba Authentication

  • View exported share sandisk16gb in Finder

Samba Share in Finder

Troubleshooting:

Assuming you followed the steps above, connected to your smb server and found it to be locked, or read-only or anything of the sort do not worry. This should only apply if the filesystem of your external drive is exfat because setting up fstab is slightly different for exfat permissions. To start use ls -la within the directory your disk is mounted to, if the owner of the directory is root, instead of your username (likely pi) then these next steps should apply to you.

  • First unmount from the disk using sudo umount /home/pi/mntThumbDrv with your specific directory if you used one
  • Then add /dev/sdXX /home/pi/mntThumbDrv exfat defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0 to /etc/fstab using sudo nano /etc/fstab replace the XX with the name of your drive, this can be determined using lsblk
  • Run sudo mount -a and reconnect, the problem should be resolved