Okay, I think I'm reaching the edge of my Linux knowledge on a particular problem, rather perhaps I'm hitting a hole in my knowledge.

 

I've not ever really done much with mount points or permissions. I'm hitting a snag mounting a share on my unRAID box from a Linux appliance and would appreciate some help. Background is this - there's a guy who makes a very complete and nice looking Linux appliance for SAB/Sick/Couch/Headphones. I have fired this up and it really looks very nice! I would like to move to this so I can dump a Win7 VM I'm running that's not super stable and a bit of a pig.

 

The issue is that while I can mount directories outside of the VM I cannot write to those directories. If I setup the VM to download something it needs to be stored outside of the VM and interact with my unRAID shares. I have created a mount point that points to the unRAID server share and can see it, but I cannot write to it. The process trying to do this has limited rights in the VM and unRAID being mounted using "guest" as I have no accounts setup on my server and anything else wanted a password. I'm being asked to chown or chmod the directories however this doesn't seem to be working and I believe it's because the directories I'm trying to effect are actually ON the unRAID server. I am also concerned that if I were successful I would run into permissions issues on my unRAID shares but I'm not sure. The whole thread with screenshots is posted here -> http://aceshome.com/forums/index.php?topic=20.0

 

I feel at this ppoint that the issue I'm running into is more an interaction with unRAID than it is an issue with his appliance which is why I'm asking for help here. The developer of this appliance has been VERY patient but I feel as if at this point I'm asking him to support a quirk of unRAID moreso than anything going on with his stuff.

 

Mind you, I ran into this SAME situation when I tried to create my own Ubuntu VM and interact with unRAID - I simply had no clue how to setup the mount much less create it! I'm a bit further along this time around but still stuck again. I'm thinking that users here have had to have run into situations mounting unRAID and might have insight

 

Thoughts?

First step is to create a blank directory inside the VM (will use the path /downloads for this example).

mkdir /downloads

 

Using the IP address of "192.168.1.5" as your unRAID server & the shared directory as "/media/sharedir" & username/password of myuser/mypass. You will need to change this to match your actual IP & shared directory. Also assuming you are using samba shares on unRAID.

 

Next will need to edit your /etc/fstab in your Linux VM & add the following line:

//192.168.1.5/sharedir /downloads cifs username=myuser,password=mypass,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

So anything you change/create in your unRAID share will belong to the "myuser" user.

 

Now if you run the following command from your VM, it should mount the directory (& being in /etc/fstab it will auto remount it at every reboot):

mount -a

 

If for some reason you want to remove the mount point

umount /downloads

Notice this is umount, NOT uNmount!

 

I like to use the following command to see if it worked correctly (also good for seeing how much disk space is used/free)

df -h

Potential gotcha:  Blank passwords.

 

Say you want to use the user "nobody" with a blank password. The line in /etc/fstab would change to:

//192.168.1.5/sharedir /downloads cifs username=nobody,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

 

When you run "mount -a", you will receive a prompt for a password, just hit enter & it will mount.

 

The problem arises when you restart the VM. It will seemingly hang during bootup, waiting for the password. If you hit enter a few times, it should continue to boot normally. I am not sure how to use a blank password with /etc/fstab. If you use a username with a password & enter it like the above post then this issue (boot waiting for password) will not happen.

 

There is the option to use guest & not be prompted for a user/pass... but I am unsure which unRAID user will be used or if it will allow the connection.

 

Here is a link that has some other details on mounting samba shares: http://opensuse.swerdna.org/susesambacifs.html

Well, as it stands now I've got a mount created, I'm trying various permissions etc. The user on the client side is named nzb and the user has a "preshared" password hash so I don't know the actual password. I have created the mount both through a web shell and via the Webmin interface. If you look at the linked thread you can see some of the pains I've gone thru trying different things.

 

As it stands now in not using user accounts on my unRAID, it's wide open. Will I be required to use accounts? I suppose I could do some hacking to get the hash over, if I do this and create files I will need to move them to directories that are currently wide open. Will clients still be able to access them freely afterwards? Designating those shares for this nzb user is fine so long as the blank user that accesses them now won't be locked out...

Okay, here are the settings that APPEAR to be working. I have downloaded one file and it appears to be processing correctly - whew!

 

Okay, this still isn't working. I've even gone so far as to create a userID on my unRAID to make the mount and providing creds but it fails to consistently work. I'm using CIFS for this, would NFS be any better?

 

How has anyone setup shares to be mounted by a Linux machine? Anytime I try to access unRAID I seem to be required to provide a password and if I try to send back a blank it fails. I've managed to get files to transfer a time or two with wrong permissions and thought I was close but then while making changes lost the ability. I'm stuck.

 

Here's where someone else had the issue -> http://sickbeard.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3605&start=20

 

However I cannot easily bump my users to Root level in this appliance.

 

Edit: Okay solved I THINK. Webmin was making some fairly whacky looking mount entries in fstab. I mimicked an entry that had worked for someone else and it's working. I think this isn't an unRAID issue but a whacky Webmin creating bad mounts. <sigh>

Lovely, while it's true that things now process properly I'm now getting files created with the username of the account used to mount the damned share. From a Windows box I'm unable to delete, rename, or do anything very useful with the files other than read them. Argh!!