Using old netbook as NAS and mpd server

1. Turn on the netbook
2. Install and enable ssh
3. Setup the hostname
4. Install Samba
5. Grant Samba write permission to the file system
6. Enable and start smb services
7. Setting permissions of the share directory.
8. Samba configurations
9. Mounting external drive, well it is easy :)
10. Conclusion

I have ASUS netbook eeePC 1005PX and it is one of my favourite possession. I bought it in 2010 and used it heavily till 2015 or 2016. I used to carry it with me everywhere, to my client meetings, to cafes and it was my secondary work machine for doing proper work. I had Windows installed in it but later switched to fedora with xfce desktop. It is not at all fast but gets the work done. I was not using it for a long time, I didn try to use it for some side projects but didn't do much with it.

I had Raspberry pi in India, I bought it when it came out and used it as a network storage and also as an mpd server. Although I do use Amazon Music, Spotify and YouTube for listening to music once in a while but I was missing my own mpd server. After moving to UK I never really got a chance to set it up. Today is the day.

1 Turn on the netbook

Yeah it turned it on. I had the Indian plug but I found a UK plug which I connected to the power adaptator and all good.

2 Install and enable ssh

dnf install openssh-server

Check the status of sshd.

systemctl status sshd

If it is not running then run it.

systemctl start sshd

I already have openssh-server installed so I just had to run the service and make sure it starts on boot.

systemctl enable sshd

3 Setup the hostname

It is good to have a hostname of the machine.

hostnamectl set-hostname ravi-netbook
hostnamectl status

4 Install Samba

dnf install samba

5 Grant Samba write permission to the file system

We have to modify few things in fedora SELinux.

setsebool -P smbd_anon_write=1

Verify that it has been set correctly.

getsebool smbd_anon_write

You will see an output like this. smbd_anon_write --> on

If you don't use SELinux then just disable it completely.

setenforce 0

6 Enable and start smb services

systemctl enable smb.service
systemctl start smb.service

7 Setting permissions of the share directory.

It is not good to set 777 as the permission but I was in hurry and I will come back to fix the permissions when everything is working fine.

sudo chmod 777 /srv/public

Time to change the ownership of this directory.

sudo chown ravisagar:ravisagar -R /srv/public

8 Samba configurations

Add this in your /etc/samba/smb.conf file and restart smb.

[global]

[public]
path = /srv/public
comment = Public Folder
read only = No
public = yes
writable = yes
write list = samba
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777

Again, please make sure the permissions work for you.

9 Mounting external drive, well it is easy :)

Check connected drives.

lsblk

Then mount it to a folder that you can create in your /srv/public directory.

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /srv/public/backup1_2tb/

Mount with specific user's permission using mask

sudo mount -o umask=0022,gid=1000,uid=1000 /dev/sdb1 /srv/public/backup1_2tb

You can check your id using id command.

Mount using the UUID. First find the UUID of connected devices.

sudo blkid

Un mount previously mounted drive.

sudo umount /srv/public/backup1_2tb

Then mount using the UUID.

sudo mount UUID=ADFC5DDFFC5CF68DF /srv/public/backup1_2tb/

Now make sure this drive is mounted on reboot. So add this in your /etc/fstab

UUID=ADFC5DDFFC5CF68D /srv/public/backup1_2tb   auto    defaults        0 2

Reboot your computer and test if the drive is mounted.

sudo shutdown -r 0

Mounting second external drive.

I had to install fuse-exfat before mounting my second hard disk.

sudo dnf -y install exfat

10 Conclusion

So I hope you enjoyed reading this blog. It is not very proper setup but suitable for home I guess :)

That is it. Enjoy.

Having a samba share has multiple benefits. You have storage which is always accessible, also I use this storage's path in my mpd configuration. I wrote about how to configure mpd and ncmpcpp where I explain how to setup a server and client. In the configuration of mpd you have to specify the location of the songs. It could be local or a remote.

On mac when you add a network storage it is added at /Volumes/public.