New to Linux--looking for a solution to simply share an external hard drive on my LAN using a Raspberry Pi 4B. reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UbiquitousOddity · 2023-11-02 21:46 Hello there! I had been sharing a hard drive on my LAN for months using OpenMediaVault with zero issues. It was amazing! However, it broke when I updated it. Everything looked normal, but none of my machines (a bunch of Windows 10 machines, some laptops, and some iPhones) could access it. None of my settings changed. I figured I'd just reinstall Linux and OMV6. Turns out OMV6 is not compatible with the latest version of PiOS. Drats! Is there a better solution? At the moment, I have a fresh install of headless PiOS on a SSD just chillin', and very little experience outside of setting up my other RPi (Pi-Hole) and this Pi with OMV. Is there any other easy software I could use to simply share this HDD? I'd love to eventually learn how to get Docker going and set up torrents on the lil' guy, but I had no success last time I tried. Mainly just want to get this HDD shared so I can have all of my movies and shows on all of my machines again! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dazchad · 2023-11-02 22:09 Samba, FTP, SFTP, SSHFS, NFS. I think Samba is the easiest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- maqbeq · 2023-11-02 22:10 By sharing you mean access files on your HDD from other computers on your network using SMB, NFS, DLNA or HTTP(s)? In my case I access my media files on my RPI4 from my TV's using DLNA, I just have some directories shared via minidlna and that's all, nothing fancy but it works fine ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UbiquitousOddity · 2023-11-02 22:17 That's exactly what I need! I had OpenMediaVault just sharing that hard drive so I could access everything from all of my computers, and I enjoyed its web interface as I am not familiar with Linux terminal commands (yet). Would DLNA let me just mount that hard drive on all of our computers as a regular drive and transfer files to/from it, delete files, etc? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UbiquitousOddity · 2023-11-02 22:18 Thank you! I will look into Samba while OMV updates to support the latest version of PiOS! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shaftofbread · 2023-11-03 00:22 > Would DLNA let me just mount that hard drive on all of our computers as a regular drive and transfer files to/from it, delete files, etc? No, it will not. Samba is the right tool for this job. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ADB-UK · 2023-11-03 00:25 You can still use Bullseye - heck I've only just taken one system off Stretch (I had one app that could not move). LTS fixes are passed through to the Pi versions (1 Pi of mine has 14 updates in the last two months) and if this Pi is only doing one thing (and has good backups) then I would be relaxed for the next year or so. Look to limit access and do not play with it! You can see details on LTS dates at https://wiki.debian.org/LTS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UbiquitousOddity · 2023-11-03 02:51 Excellent, thank you very much. I will look into that! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UbiquitousOddity · 2023-11-03 02:52 Noted! I am lazy and don't want to reformat it again, since I'm using an Argon m.2 and it's a whole process to reformat. ...but maybe I should. If I don't find a better option (or if I fail at Samba) I'll just reformat again hahaha ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shaftofbread · 2023-11-03 03:17 Having re-read your question and had a look at openmediavault, I'm now thinking that openmediavault might be the best choice given your prior satisfaction with it. Openmediavault certainly offers a lot of nice features that you'll not get from Samba alone. PiOS isn't the only OS that will run on a Pi. I use [Armbian](https://www.armbian.com/) on my Pi-clones (orange-pi) and I've been perfectly happy with it. Maybe the decision for you is the same as that faced by parents of multiple children during an in-flight emergency: which do you love more, PiOS or openmediavault! :-) Aside: I have a pretty long experience of wrangling linux, unix and unix-like OSs; I'm happy to help if you get stuck. Feel free to DM me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EndlessHiway · 2023-11-03 03:31 Samba isn't hard to get set up. Im dumb and managed to do it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- maqbeq · 2023-11-03 07:22 I don't know what is the catch with that OS you are using now (pios?), but using just barebones RPi OS lite and being comfy at the CLI, it's not difficult to setup minidlna and samba to share your HDD in your network. It will also make your RPi less bloated. You'll end using PuTTY (or any other SSH client) instead of a web browser. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ADB-UK · 2023-11-03 09:58 I doubt Samba has changed under Bookworm but keep that thought in mind as you rebuild esp using notes from Bullseye etc. Try the NAS guide at [https://github.com/thagrol/Guides](https://github.com/thagrol/Guides) If anything I would expect fstab to allow more options but the above guide is pre Bookworm.