Raspberry Pi

Mount your Raspberry Pi as a hard drive

WARNING: This is a very permissive file sharing configuration that gives you read/write/delete permissions across the entire file system. It is not recommended if you are the least bit concerned about being able to delete important files over a network.

Create a mount point

In order to avoid permissions problems in creating, deleting and moving files the following commands create a shortcut to the root file system and mount it as a virtual drive.

  • cd /
  • sudo -i
  • mkdir /rootfs
  • mount --bind / /rootfs

The following steps will allow the above mount command to run everytime the RPi is rebooted. Otherwise you will have to run it manually

  • sudo nano /etc/fstab

add the line

/               /rootfs         none    bind

It should look something like this:

proc            /proc           proc    defaults          0       0
/dev/mmcblk0p1  /boot           vfat    defaults          0       2
/dev/mmcblk0p2  /               ext4    defaults,noatime  0       1
/               /rootfs         none    bind
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
#   use  dphys-swapfile swap[on|off]  for that
  • Press CTRL+o to save the file
  • Press CTRL+x to exit nano

Install Samba

From a Shell run these commands

  • sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin

The next command will prompt you for a password you will need to remember. Use raspberry if you want to keep the default as the pi user's defaults

  • sudo smbpasswd -a pi
  • sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.old
  • sudo rm /etc/samba/smb.conf
  • sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

You should now be editing the configuration file. Paste this into it: 

[global]
workgroup = HOME
netbios name = SAMBA
server string = Samba Server %v
map to guest = Bad User
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
preferred master = No
local master = No
dns proxy = No
security = User

# Share
[Data]
path = /rootfs
valid users = pi
read only = No
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
  • Press CTRL+o to save the file
  • Press CTRL+x to exit nano
  • sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

You should now be able to mount your Raspberry Pi via the address smb://your.raspberry.pi.ip/Data

You user will be pi and the password will be raspberry or whatever you set it to above

Note: The Mac will often write hidden ._ files on the drive that can sometimes confuse the compiler into thinking they are source files. Blue Harvest is good at removing these on the fly.