HFS-NAS-RPi

Set up an HFS+ disk as a NAS using Raspberry Pi + SAMBA (For File sharing). aka. Seedbox

Steps

These main steps are taken from this guide with some minor modifications here and there to accommodate some changes or requirements that I might need.

Disable Automount

First we need to disable automount in pcmanfm.conf:

• cd ~/.config/pcmanfm/LXDE-pi/
• sudo nano pcmanfm.conf

[volume]
mount_on_startup=0
mount_removable=0

• Save and Exit (ctrl + X > Y > Enter)

Mount the correct HFS+ partition

• Run sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get upgrade
• Add HFS+ support sudo apt-get install hfsprogs
• HFS+ uses GPT (GUID Partition Table) so we need to sudo apt-get install gdisk
• Create a directory to mount the drive to. In my case I use DEF: sudo mkdir /media/DEF
• Make sure the drive is detected, run sudo fdisk -l
• Check which partition is the correct one to mount: sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda
• The partition to mount in my case is /dev/sda1
• Find the UUID of your drive: sudo blkid
• Copy the UUID, in my case it is: 175bce55-43ef-32d6-adca-ce3fa28945fb
• Mount the drive sudo mount -t hfsplus -o force,rw /dev/sda1 /media/DEF
• Now that the drive is mounted, let's make sure the RPi mounts it everytime it boots. Let's do sudo nano /etc/fstab
• Add a new line to fstab: UUID="175bce55-43ef-32d6-adca-ce3fa28945fb" /media/DEF hfsplus uid=1000,nofail,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.requires=network-online.target,x-systemd.device-timeout=1ms,force,rw 0 0
• Save and Exit (ctrl + X > Y > Enter)
• run sudo chmod -R 777 /media/DEF
• Test if the disk is writtable: if [ -w "/path/to/dir" ]; then echo "WRITABLE"; else echo "NOT WRITABLE"; fi

If after a reboot you face some errors such as "device is read-only" or something among those lines, run this command, reboot and try again: sudo fsck.hfsplus /dev/sda1.

Install SAMBA

• sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin
• Backup the original config file before making any changes: sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bkup
• sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
• Remove the "#" symbol from the line security = user. (If it's not there, then just add it.)
• Go to the bottom of the config file and add your share details:

[ShareName] comment = Raspberry Pi NAS
path = /media/DEF/
valid users = @users
force group = users
create mask = 0660
directory mask = 0771
read only = no

• Save and Exit (ctrl + X > Y > Enter)
• Restart SAMBA: sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

Create SAMBA user

• sudo useradd *username* -m -G users
• sudo passwd *username*
• You’ll be prompted to type in the password twice to confirm. Now we can add this user as a samba user.
• sudo smbpasswd -a *username*