Arvin,

I know all my picture or in my private folder. 40K+ pictures, I cannot afford to delete them.

I share picture as you do, and that allows a DLNA deive to see them.

The bad side is, sharing the pictures, video etc, are not the fastest way to do them. Yes, I'd like to make the whole folder and subfolders sharable. But that is not allowed with HipServe software. YOu have to create a share for each. Bummer.

So, I have not tried the option, to make items auotmatically shared with family members accoutns.

Thanks for your reply DJ,

I find it weird that it is hard to share folders!  I will do some tests about permissions though when I find time.  The fastest way to share still is to put them in the public folder! But run the risk of accidental deletion!

Hope someone can help us out!

TTFN

Arvin

Accidental deletes, power outages, hard drive crashes, acts of nature... there is only one way to protect against them.  Keep a proper backup!

Yes, you could keep them in your private folder and share them manually but as you've noticed we flatfile everthing and don't do it recursively so it's a pain in the neck (i've lost that battle, lets not bring it up again).  So put them in your Public drive, and a copy on your backup drive and sleep well!

Cheers,

Roby!

Hi Arvin555,

you might be able to log in to the GoflexHome with SSH and edit the smb.conf to change samba permissions for the Public folder.

Changing permissions on your laptop won't affect the GFH.

Check this link http://www.openstora.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1633

But as robyb says, it is a lot easier to keep a backup so if anything gets deleted it can be restored. I have a Seagate Expansion drive plugged into the USB port on my GFH and back up my GFH. and important stuff like photos that are irreplaceable I also back up to cloud storage in case the house burns down.

Thanks for your reply robyb and Kenji,

Your post made me realize that I need to rethink the way I consider my network drive.  I actually considered it as a backup drive of my two other computers, thus I was surprised about Roby's comment that I should back it up!  But now I realize that as people are going to access it more often, it is vulnerable to crashes and stuff as well, thus not really much of a backup but just an extra HDD linked to all the computers!

Roby, if enough GFH users come out and say that we want the option to share the whole folder, won't that count for something to back you up?

Kenji, thanks for the link, I actually saw this during my research, before I posted here, I thought it was a bit complicated.  I reviewed it and unfortunately it is still a bit complicated because it involved installing a package manager.  I am using Ubuntu so I am slightly familiar with the instructions,  I will reread again soon to see if it's just me a getting a bit sleepy  

Thanks again you guys!

TTFN

Arvin

The part about installing a package manager is only so you can install nano text editor, so you can skip that bit if you are happy using the built in text editors ( ed or vi ).

You don't need to follow what's in the earlier link exactly, take a look here at how to customize your smb.conf file to suit what you want http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/smb.conf.5.html

The smb.conf file is just a text file so any text editor is OK and if you are already familiar with Ubuntu then you are halfway there already. Make a copy of your smb.conf file before you start so you can revert.

And you can always reflash the firmware if you screw things up too much. 

You'll need this too http://www.openstora.com/wiki/index.php?title=Easy_Root_Access 

arvin555 : "I actually considered it as a backup drive of my two other computers, thus I was surprised about Roby's comment that I should back it up! "

As long as you have copies of your important files on two separate devices then that's OK as a minimum. You would be very unlucky to have two drives fail at the same time.

So where does the backing up end? It depends on how critical your data is and how paranoid you are.

I back up my GFH because I have stuff on it that I don't have on my PC's.

If it was only backups of my PC's I probably wouldn't back it up (apart from keeping photos in another physical location - in the cloud or burned to DVD and left with a relative for safekeeping)

1. log in with SSH and become root user http://www.openstora.com/wiki/index.php?title=Easy_Root_Access

2.  use vi text editor to edit the samba configuration file         vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

3. type a to enter input mode in vi and add the following text to the end of the smb.conf file;

[GUEST]
comment = Public Guest Access
browseable = yes
readonly = yes
guest ok = yes
path = /home/0common

4. Press 'Esc' to exit input mode and type ZZ to save and exit smb.conf

5. Restart samba - type  /etc/init.d/smb restart and wait for restart

6. Create a Guest user in seagateshare preferences. Uncheck both  'create as Administrator" and " Let User Access Family Folder" (or remove admin and family folder access from an existing user)

User Guest now has read only access to the Public Folder (except it is called Guest share - you can change [GUEST] in the smb.conf text above to something else like [Family Access] if you prefer).

(usual disclaimers - if you break anything it's not my fault, but I have tested and it works OK for me)

Thanks kenji,

I did the following:

1. Install SSH first

2. typed in ssh username_hipserv2_seagateplug_XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX@PPP.PPP.P.PPP

3. At first I was stuck with the error connection closed by (IP ADDRESS) but found out I got one letter of the Product Key Wrong.

4. I was finally able to get in the goflex network drive and used Sudo -E -s to get root, which changed the prompt to "Bash" I did get that error "audit_log_user_command(): Connection refused"

5. Used vi /etc/samba/smb.conf and pasted your suggested script at the bottom of the conf file. "ZZ" has to be uppercase, had trouble with that at first. : )

6. Did everthing else you suggested.  And made a new guest account.

My only problem is that when I tested the Guest account, I could not see the public folder at all, I only was able to see Personal and Backup.

Wonder if I might have missed something or might need to change something else in the conf file?

I also changed the name [Guest] to something more descriptive. 

I also checked using my admin account though, and the "Guest" folder is already there!  Plus even though I have Admin access it is already write protected which is great!  It also shows the exact mirror of my Publc files, again exactly what I was hoping for!

TTFN
Arvin

It is not an exact mirror of the Public Folder, it IS the Public Folder.

The folder that is shared as Goflex Home Public is actually /home/0common. You have created another link to the same folder, but with different (read only) permissions.

The Guest account won't have access using the Goflex Home Public link to /home/0common folder. I'm not sure why you are not able to see the [Guest] (or whatever you called it) folder though.

How are you trying to access it?  It works fine for me in Windows explorer but I haven't checked in Ubuntu. I can't see why it wouldn't work there too, but I'll take a look in Ubuntu when I get a chance.

In Ubuntu Desktop go File> Connet to Server and enter details as for attached screenshot, obviously changing Share, Domain and Username to match your own setup.

To set guest access to to whole Goflex_Home server you would need to set the server authentication mode to Share (instead of User) in global settings in smb.conf and that would probably be a bad idea. But that is why you can't see the Guest share.

Another option might be to set access to the readonly [Guest] Share for specific users using

          guest ok = no

          valid users = username

in smb.conf

Update: I created a new standard (non-admin) account in Ubuntu and the Goflex home is visible in file explorer Browse Network with the Guest folder not requiring any log-in and read only (in other words, working perfectly).

You can also browse Windows Network and get to it that way.

Kenji,

Thanks for your patience. I just want to first mention this so that I won't forget. I tried using firefly to get/confirm the details to gain ssh details as suggested here: http://www.openstora.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=80&start=45  but the problem is that no one posted how to fix and get back web interface config access.  http://192.168.0.101:6689/config.html  so I just used ssh again and edited the mt-daapd.conf file's web root.  Don't know if there is a shorter way on doing it though.

Going back to my problem.  I apologize I was not clear about what I was doing.  But today I have more details.

1. Ubuntu access using Nautilus is 100% no problem I can see the "Guest" folder.

2. Web interface access/Goflex home though, the "Guest" folder does not show, even on my Admin account or on the Guest account that I made. 

3. Unfortunately the family usually uses the Web interface to access the folder!

Oh man, I hope there is a loop hole for this, so that new folders will show in the web interface. 

But if not, I wonder..

1. I change all the settings of my Public folder to read only.

2. Change the settings of my "Guest" folder to read and write by Admin

So that family members can still use public folder as usual, and I just upload using the "guest" folder?

If there is no easy way to have the new folder show in the webinterface, I'll try this, unless you think it won't work!

TTFN

Arvin

Hi arvin555, 

I really don't know what the firefly stuff is about. Is that just to get root access? Using PuTTY and the easy root accessmethod is as simple as it gets, so I don't know why you want to try a different method.

Anyway, I tried setting valid users = username and that worked fine too.

I guess I don't know why you have a robust, tested and proven OS and prefer to use a flaky web app, but that's your perogative.

I tried the web app for transferring files between my Public folder and External storage to speed up the transfer and ended up corrupting my files system and had to reformat the drive.

Modifying the web app would be tricky, if not impossible. So I think your idea of making the Public folder read only and setting another share to write might just work. Then set the other share as

writeable =yes

guest ok =no

valid users = username

(You don't want guest to have write access to the public folder otherwise you are back to where you started )

UPDATE: I tried it out and you can change the Public Folder to readonly but the web app still lets you delete files.

I guess that makes sense as the samba sharing only affects network shares but the web app runs on the server, so it doesn't care about samba.

Kenji,  I just mentioned firefly thing because I spent 1 hour googling how to fix the root back to what it was, but couldn't so I figured I use ssh and it worked.  Not really relevant to my main concern, I just used it to double check my Product Key and other settings, which actually was lucky coz I wrote one of the product key letters incorrectly that is why  I had problems accessing the network drive through ssh at first.

Actually unfortunately I am the only person who is using Ubuntu at home, all the rest are using Weendows!   For some reason the PC of my brother isn't properly set up to browse the network drive easily, I haven't had time to throughly check it, but if I could fix it, then they will probably only access it through Samba and not Web access.  But yeah unfortunately at the end of the day Web app is still a possible source of accidental deletes or modification, so we go full circle about better to just make sure I have proper backup, which I wll really do anyway as you guys suggested.

I will still want to modify as per our idea to change Public as Restricted and I will just rename the writable one something else.

Unless someone can come up with a modification method for the web access, I'd say my concerns are more or less solved thanks to your patience and assistance. Plus I gained a bit more knowledge about my network drive too  

Best regards!

Arvin

No problem Arvin. Although I don't understand what  "fix the root back to what it was" means. Root is just an administrator account. You switch to root user with the sudo command and when you exit PuTTY/SSH you automatically log out of the root user account too.

You can check the product key in the seagateshare web app. Just click the About Goflex Home link at the bottom left of the page.

When you get windows networking sorted out then you can restrict access to the Public folder through the web app.

I only use the web app for setting GFH preferences, so maybe that's why I missed the point of what you were trying to do, which is change the web app access to the Public folder to read only. 

But it was an interesting exercise and might be helpful to someone else reading this thread who wants to provide Read Only access to the Public Folder through Windows networking.

cheers

Kenji,

If you are up to it, I have another question/Challenge.

I have set up GFH access on my brother's computer already, they can only now access the "family share" folder that we made. 

Now I wonder, I don't want them to be able to delete, but I want them to be able to share using the public folder, so is it possible to set up the Share folder to allow Downloading and uploading but no deleting?

hahaha!  I'm just shooting for the moon here

TTFN

Arvin

I'm far from being a Linux expert, but you should be able to set permissions for the public folder using the "Sticky" bit with the chmod +t command.

They will still be able to delete their own files, but not anyone else's.

If you want them to only be able to add, change & execute but never delete even their own files that would be tricky or impossible.

I'm sorry I completely missed including this very important information.

My brother is using WinXP OS  

But yeah I agree that it might be hard to just allow adding files but not being able to do anything else. 

Actually was thinking you already taught me how to restrict or allow Read or Write, but then writing means allowing all access, which will then make all the trouble we went through, useless

Any suggestions with WinXP? 

Then again I thought that we need to edit samba?

Hahaha, I just realized if goflex allowed sharing of whole folders (again this issue) I could just make them put their files in the personal folder of the account and I can just manually transfer them to public folder!  But alas that won't be happening as well.  It is not like there is also a super user account that when used could access all the usernames and their files!

TTFN

Arvin

No, the Goflex Home runs Linux. That is where you set up samba shares and permissions (we already went through this setting up the family share, remember). It doesn't matter if your brother uses Win XP

If you set permissions for the /home/0common folder with the chmod +t then users should be able to read + write  but not delete files - unless they own them.

And actually yes, there is a superuser account that when used could access all the usernames and their files.

That is the root user. In SSH sudo -s to become root and then you can access all folders.

ls /home/username/GoFlex\ Home\ Personal

Here's an example; 

say I am AdminUser and another user is User1. To copy all files from User1's personal folder to a folder called SHARED in the Public Folder;

1. log in to SSH with PuTTY as AdminUser

2. sudo -s to become root

3. cp -u -r --preserve=all  /home/User1/GoFlex\ Home\ Personal/* /home/0common/SHARED

-u switch will only copy when the source is newer than the destination (update)

-r switch to copy subfolders etc (recursive)

preserve=all preserves file attributes

Note that running commands as root you can screw things up, so be careful and make sure your data is backed up (it should be anyway if it is important).

I was trying to set up public key authentication to run commands like the above using Plink, without having to type a password. I couldn't get it working at the time, posted here but couldn't get a solution and haven't gone back to it yet.

If anyone has public key authentication working on the GFH I'd still like some tips on that. 

Kenji,

Thanks for your patience again and your help.

I re-read your post about the chmod and actually have set it already by doing this:

ssh "username"_hipserv2_seagateplug_"PRODUCT ID"@"IP ADDRESS"

Then sudo -s for root

then

chmod +t /home/0common

To test:

I made a new folder using my PC running Ubuntu, make folder ok. Tried to delete folder... unfortunately couldn't. Permission denied.

Which means either I skipped a step, forgot a command or am not logged on as the owner, which is weird because I was the one who made the directory in the first place.

I am going to try to log in using Win7 later and see what happens. 

But it seems that as long as this permission denial also happens with Win7 or XP then it means we have figured out exactly what  I hope to do.

In fact there might be no use for the "Family share folder" which is read only.  I'll experiment some more and will report back.

TTFN

Arvin

Just an update, after I modified the folder properties of 0common with chmod +t I can confirm that I am now unable to delete or rename anything on /0common/  however the subfolders like /photos and /videos folder in it can still be renamed, deleted changed. 

Please help me, should I have used chmod +t -r /home/0common as command?  So that -r means that all the subfolders will have the same settings? 

Also I can confirm again that these modifications does not affect the web interface, the web interface can still do everything even with the new properties.  Which was explained by you already, that the web app is completely different from samba. Which actually works out, because at least I can do the editing in the web app, like I deleted the test folder i made.

So now the only remaining issues:

1. How to set chmod +t on all the subfolders in the public folder?

2. I understand +t allows only the owner to delete, but I was the owner who made the folder, but couldn't actually delete or rename the folder.

Item no. 2 is not a big issue though, because I can just do it using the web interface.

TTFN

Arvin

You could use -R with chmod to apply to subfolders, but I think the problem is that the samba settings for the Public folder are taking priority.

1. Permissions are forced as 0775 so any new sub folders you add can be deleted even if you recursively set the sticky bit on current folders.

2. The owner is forced as user so user arvin can't delete files that arvin added if the folder has the sticky bit.

If you want to check permissions, you can use ls -l command. For example; ls -l /home/ will show permissions for contents of home folder.

So you could either tinker with samba config for the Public folder or create another folder in  /home/ and set permissions how you want. That folder won't be accessible through the web app though. The links below should help you, but I'm handing the challenge back to you - cheers.

http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/smb.conf.5.html

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/filepermissions.html

hahaha, thanks Kenji, making me work eh?

Well doing so will make me learn more about the system.

Will post here if sucessful

Cheers!

TTFN

Arvin