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Exeleration-G
Asked: 2011-12-08 11:31:11 +0800 CST

How do I share a folder on a NTFS partition over the network?

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I'm on Ubuntu 11.10, and I want to share a folder on an automounted NTFS partition (/dev/sda4) over the network. The purpose of this network is to share files between computers, it contains mostly Windows computers. I use this /dev/sda4 partition both from Windows 7 and Ubuntu. Using Nautilus, I right-click the directory, then I click 'Sharing Options', then I mark the three checkboxes. When I try to apply the settings though, it says 'Couldn't change the rights of the folder "foldername"'.

I've put the output of sudo blkid and cat /etc/fstab below.

sudo blkid

/dev/sda2: LABEL="Windows" UUID="481319C261268D8D" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda3: UUID="23dac5e8-aae7-43ac-964c-c8a5a033b0d7" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda4: LABEL="Data" UUID="00F1B269675B86AE" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="6de8b757-f17e-4e36-935c-a3fd6012c628" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="d504bae2-fad6-4f6a-b489-7719ad0fe3b3" TYPE="swap"

cat /etc/fstab

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
# / was on /dev/sda3 during installation
UUID=23dac5e8-aae7-43ac-964c-c8a5a033b0d7 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=d504bae2-fad6-4f6a-b489-7719ad0fe3b3 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/sda4 /media/Data ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 0

How can I share this folder?

partitioning

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    After a bit of searching, I found the solution myself:

    First, I had to give myself the ownership over /dev/sda4, and I had to give group and others read and execute permission. I did that by changing the partition entry in /etc/fstab.

    To do that, I had to know my uid and gid. So the first thing I did was writing the following command in a Terminal:

    id $USER

    This will give an output like this:

    UID=1000(myname) GID=1000(myname) groups=1000(myname),4(adm),24(cdrom), ...

    So now I knew that both my uid and my gid were 1000.

    Do you already know the name of the NTFS partition? If not, type this command in a Terminal:

    sudo blkid

    and write down the NTFS partition on a piece of paper.

    Now, to change the permissions, I edited /etc/fstab with the nano text editor. So, the next command you have to type in a terminal is:

    sudo nano /etc/fstab

    Go all the way down and type this line:

    /dev/sda4 /media/Data ntfs defaults,umask=0022,uid=YourUIDHere,gid=YourGIDHere 0 0

    (You should replace /dev/sda4 by the NTFS partition that you wrote down earlier).

    Explanation: umask=0022 sets the directory's (d) permissions permissions to drwxr-xr-x, to make sure that the user (me) can read, write and execute (rwx) while the group and others can only read and execute (r-x) the directory, which is what I wanted.

    After that, I could mark the three checkboxes without any errors, and the folder would be shared over the network. Because I was not sure whether the sharing settings would be kept after a restart, I unchecked the checkboxes and added some lines in /etc/samba/smb.conf instead. I did that this way:

    In a terminal, I typed sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

    I scrolled down to the last line, and pasted the following there:

    [MyShare]
    comment = My Share
    path = /media/Data/FolderToBeShared
    browseable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    read only = yes
    create mask = 0755

    I saved the file, and then rebooted. The folder was accessible from the network now.

    • 17

  2. just mount the ntfs dir as:

    -o uid=current_user,gid=current_usergroup

    get the current user and current user group as pointed by Exeleration-G:

    id MyUserName
    • 1

  3. The most simple solution I can think of us is to use a symlink to the NTFS partition.

    How I would do this is:

    • Create a folder on your Ubuntu partition that you can share.
    • Link the folder on the windows partition to be within this folder:
      ln -s /path/to/folder/on/ntfs /path/to/new/location/linkname
    • Set the parent folder you created to be shared over the network, choosing any extra options as you desire (for example, allowing guest etc).
    • Click "apply permissions to enclosed files" in the permissions tab. Not every single permission will be applied, of course, but read access should be enough.

    I have not tested this myself, but if I understand sharing correctly, it should be able to work.

    • 0