How To - Common Internet File Sharing (CIFS)
Introduction
For those looking for another option besides NFS for recording movies to another PC on the network, there is CIFS. CIFS is basically an SMB client for connecting the Linux DB to a Windows share. Many of the newest images already have CIFS mounting capabilities built-in.
This guide will cover the following topics:
-Creating an account
-Sharing a folder
-Configuring the DB
Please note, at the end of each section I have included DOS command tool instructions for performing each of the tasks. There are also troubleshooting tips at the end of the document
-Creating an account
These instructions will be written with Windows XP Pro In mind. If you have Home, I suggest you move the end of each section and follow the DOS command line instructions.
Creating a User:
Click the Start button and right click on My Computer, then click on Manage. For Home edition, open the Control Panel.
Once in the management console, open “Local Users and Groups”. For Home edition, click on Add Users
Open the Users Folder. Right click on the Users folder and click on New Users. For Home, click on Add new user.
Enter the new user name. Suggest you keep the name short as it will be easier when typing on the DB remote.
Enter the password and confirm.
Uncheck “User must change password at next logon”
Check “Password never expires”. Press the Create button and you are done.
If you do not wish to go through the entire GUI process, you can simply enter the following command at a Command Prompt
Net User dream dream /add
This command will create an account named “dream” with the password of “dream”.
Sharing a Folder
Windows XP Home Edition will not easily allow you to disable “Simple File Sharing Mode”. See the Command Line section at the end of this topic.
If your XP machine is in a Workgroup as opposed to a Domain, you will first have to disable the Simple File Sharing Mode.
To do this, go into the Control Panel and open the “Folder Options” icon. This icon is under “Appearance and Themes” if you are in Category view.
Click the “View” tab and scroll down to the bottom. Uncheck the item:
“Use simple file sharing (Recommended)”
Press the Apply button to implement the setting and close the windows.
In Windows Explorer, browse to the drive you want to share a folder on. Create your Folder, “Dreambox” for example. Create another folder within that folder called “movie” (all of this is without the quotes of course). Do not name the subfolder movies, it must be “movie”.
Go back to the Dreambox folder and right click on it. Select “Sharing and Security”
Check the “Share this folder” button. Notice the name of the folder appears in the “Share Name” text box. You can leave it at this or change it if you wish. Just remember what the folder is being shared as if you do change it.
Press the Permissions button
In the permissions window, click the Add button. Be sure the “From this location” field displays the name of your PC. If it doesn’t, just press the locations button and select your PC.
Type in the name of the account you created, in the instructions above, we created the account; dream
Press the OK button and you will now see the dream account in the top window above Everyone.
Be sure to check off at lease Change and Read permissions. It wouldn’t hurt to check off Full as well.
Press OK and OK again and you are done.
The folder should now be shared out with the user dream having read/write permissions.
Note to advanced users: I tried modifying the NTFS permissions alone and it didn’t work. It appears as the SMB client (CIFS) requires Windows Share permissions to be set.
Command Line
Once again, if you do not want to spend time doing this through the GUI, you can perform the following steps:
Make a folder on the D: drive called “Dreambox” (You can make this wherever you like, just adjust the path accordingly.
Change to the D: drive, type “md Dreambox” (without quotes), Press Enter
Now create the “movie” subfolder by typing “md Dreambox\movie” (again, without quotes), then press Enter. Do not name the subfolder movies, it must be “movie”.
Share the folder:
At the command prompt, type the following:
Net Share dreambox=d:\dreambox **Note the lowercase for the share. When mounting in DB use lower case.
Issue NTFS permissions **XP Home Edition users see here**
To grant NTFS permissions you can use the command line tool “CACLS”. In this guide, we created the “dreambox” folder at the root of D: Adjust this command to accommodate your share location if necessary.
This command is saying, use the CACLS tool on the folder D:\dreambox /Edit the permissions, instead of replacing them and /Grant the account “dream” Full NTFS access. For a comprehensive list of things this tool can do, type CACLS /? At the command prompt.
It’s important to have the /E as you want to Edit the rights to the folder, not replace them.
After you press “Enter” you will know you were successful if you see the following message:
Configuring the DB
NOTE: When mounting a DB 500 with Pi mount to /mnt/nfs instead of /hdd below
To mount the drive in Enigma, Follow these steps:
Open the “Settings” menu
Open the “Expert Menu”
Open the “Communication” menu
Press the Blue button to enter the “Mounts” menu.
Enter the following information taking care to change the IP address to the IP of your receiving PC/Server
Check off the Automount button if you want the drive to mount each time the DB boots.
To make sure you have done everything right, on this screen, press the Green button to mount the volume.
You should see this message if all went well:
If you want to mount the volume in a telnet session instead of using the Enigma GUI, type the following command at the prompt.
mount -t cifs -o user=dream,password=dream //
Taking care to enter the IP of your receiving PC/Server.
-Remember, on the 500 with Pi, set the LocalDir: to /mnt/nfs
-Remember, Do not name the subfolder movies, it must be “movie”.
-Remember, always create the “dreambox” share in lower case.
-Remember, always create the “movie” subfolder in lowercase.
Here is a good link that goes into setting NTFS permissions on XP Home Edition.
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/article...s/wxpsimsh.html