Re: mount an external usb hdd and share it through samba

[Marco Möller <talby@debianlists.mobilxpress.net>]

On 06.05.20 08:35, Michael Morgan wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>   
>
> I have an external usb hdd. I would like to automount it on boot and share
> it through samba.
>
>   
>
> 1) So I put it in the fstab. It automounts correctly on boot, no problem:
>
> UUID=XXX /usb-hdd ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0
>
>   
>
> 2) I then share the directory "/usb-hdd" through samba (in smb.conf) after
> it was mounted. No problem again:
>
> [usb-hdd]
>
> comment = raid5-usb
>
> path = /usb-hdd
>
> read only = No
>
> valid users = michaelm
>
>   
>
> 3) however, if the machine restarts, automounts works but the samba share
> always fails. I can easily fix it by:
>
> systemctl restart smbd
>
>   
>
> Since automount works, and samba will work well if I restart it, my guess is
> that on boot, samba (smbd service) starts before /usb-hdd is mounted. To
> make it working,
> I need make sure the fstab mounting happens before samba starts. Can anyone
> tell me how to do it? Or, any better solution for auto mount and share a usb
> HDD?

This kind of dependencies can be added to the service unit file in 
section [Unit], in your case in the file "smbd.service"

[Unit]
RequiresMountsFor=/this/path/needs/to/be/present



Good luck,
Marco.