I have a little experience with both Unix and Linux, but as a user not an administrator, so something like "Samba for Dummies" may be the right answer.  My ultimate goal is to set up disks and/or directories which only I can access for movie/tv show/picture storage, as well as directories for my wife and sons to use for data backups.  I understand security is something coming in a later release (3.1 or 3.2), so for now, hidden directories may be the answer.

 

Thanks.

The current implementation of shares (user or otherwise) does NOT allow you to specify individual disks to be hidden, or shared as read-only. Instead it applies global choices of read-write/read-only/hidden-read-only/hidden read-write to ALL the drives shared. The exception is the flash drive.

 

See here:

 

When enabled, "user shares" creates a samba shared drive for every top level folder on your disks.  In my case, this resulted in over 70 samba shares being advertised.  There is no way to individually mark a folder as read-only, or hidden, or not shared at all. 

I would love for user shares to present to me an admin page with one line per folder with individual settings per folder.  Then I could make read-only most of my media collection, and not share the folders and drives I use for backups of the other computers on my LAN except when I'm doing backups. The folders I use as network shared drives I could keep hidden and map as network drives on the PCs that use them.  As currently coded, I can't do this.

 

I use a MG-35 media player to play the .ISO images of DVDs in my collection and it sees ALL the folders shared by samba on unRaid, even if they are not used to store ISO images, but used as shared drives on the other computers on my LAN.  Ideally, these shared drives not holding media should be hidden from the media player.

 

As it is, the current implementation of "user shares" is not at all suitable for me and I have it turned off.

 

As you said, SAMBA for dummies is what is needed. Individual folder security (and visibility) is sorely needed.

 

Joe L.

Thanks Joe.  It sounds like the best I can do for now is to:

 

• Set the Flash share to "Don't export (already done),
  
• Set Disk shares to "Export read/write, hidden", minimizing the chances that my wife/sons will accidentally find/use them,
  
• Set User shares to "Don't export", but create a single drive with multiple top-level directories (i.e., "Mom", "Son_1, Son_2) and map them each their own network drive for backups, and
  
• Pick up a copy of Samba for Dummies to learn more about the subject.
  

 

BillK