So I have things working for me at this point. I was never able to get Samba worling properly. My initial issue was not having a / at the end of my folder path in the Samba config file. After fixing that issue I was able to see the shared folder but was prompted to log in each time, which was an issue in my use case. I ended up abandoning Samba and setting up Jellyfin which has been a much smoother experience, but also is providing many more features. So, if you are looking to share media on your local network, my recommendation would be Jellyfin!
Thank you so much to everyone that commented and helped me a long. I hope I get to return the favor in some way.
Hello, I’ve been working towards fully migrating to linux, but this is one issue I’m having a hard time with. I have a couple of folders on a storage drive that I share on my local network to stream movies and TV, but I can’t figure out how to do it in my Linux install. I’m running Linux Mint 22, have installed Samba, and have tried a few different walkthroughs with no success. Can anyone point me in the right direction to get this set up?
Thanks for your time!
If it is for Media Files only UPnP could be an alternative to smb.
Just ran into this the other night myself. Turns out I didn’t have the path the correct way, cause samba is picky. My original config was set up with the path = /home/user/Public but I had to change it to path = /home/user/Public/ You’re path in your reply looks like it’s missing that / at the end. After you update, don’t forget to restart the service.
Well that made it show up thankfully, but it’s asking me to log in. Any idea how to handle that? I don’t want it to ask at all so family members have ready access.
It would be helpful to know what you’ve already tried and what went wrong. The more info the better.
Well I tried the UI approach of right clicking the folder and going to share options, which is when I was prompted to install Samba, but there is warning that states “The permission for <folder> prevent othersl users from accessing this share”. I did some digging on that error, and everything I came across basically said that wouldn’t work. My next attempt was modifying the Samba config file, I added
[FolderName]
path = (file directory path I see in properties, /media/username/lettersandnumbersfordrive?/FolderName)
browseable = yes
read only = yes
guest ok = yes
create mask =0775
As instructed by a tutorial I found. When running testpram I don’t get any errors, but I’m not seeing the folder in VLC like I do when sharing from Win10. That’s as far as I have gotten. If there’s anything else that I can provide please let me know, and on that note, the drive I’m sharing from is NTFS if that has any impact.
Thanks again!
In your Samba config file, when you’re specifying a share path, after FolderName, you need to put a final /
So I added the forward slash and now the folder shows up, but it’s asking me for login credentials now. I thought “guests ok = yes” would handle that but apparently not. Any suggestions?
Similar issue: https://serverfault.com/questions/575394/samba-public-share-windows-keeps-asking-for-password#715372
Adding
[global] map to guest = bad userto smb.conf and restart the service.
If that doesn’t work there are a few other suggestions in the thread.
Use whatever username and password you have set up for an account on the host computer.
Can you share your smb.conf?
Well did the samba user account (used to connect to the samba share) have access to the files?
You might have answered the OP question, and a long standing mine as well. Gonna check this up on my setup