I have a WD 4TB external hard drive connected to my Fedora32 computer on which I have been saving data. It connects via USB, has no ethernet port (I am not the one who bought it) and I would like to make it available on my LAN. Is there any way to do it with software?
On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 2:00 PM Bob Goodwin bobgoodwin@fastmail.us wrote:
I have a WD 4TB external hard drive connected to my Fedora32 computer on which I have been saving data. It connects via USB, has no ethernet port (I am not the one who bought it) and I would like to make it available on my LAN. Is there any way to do it with software?
There's always RPi type devices, but have you checked if it will interface with any USB->Ethernet adapters?
Thanks, Richard
On 2020-07-23 15:01, Richard Shaw wrote:
There's always RPi type devices, but have you checked if it will interface with any USB->Ethernet adapters?
° I made a quick test doing that yesterday and the connection did not pop up on my file manager display as I had hoped and have done nothing more than that yet. However it occurs to me the ethernet to usb adapter probably needs the 5 volts from the usb port for operation and I don't think the WD Myboon is likely to provide that, then the thought occurs perhaps a powered usb hub, but that's another gadget like the PI.
On Thu, 2020-07-23 at 14:59 -0400, Bob Goodwin wrote:
I have a WD 4TB external hard drive connected to my Fedora32 computer on which I have been saving data. It connects via USB, has no ethernet port (I am not the one who bought it) and I would like to make it available on my LAN. Is there any way to do it with software?
Configure your PC as a file server. There are any number of ways to do this, including Samba (CIFS) and NFS, depending on what the use case is.
poc
On 2020-07-24 02:59, Bob Goodwin wrote:
I have a WD 4TB external hard drive connected to my Fedora32 computer on which I have been saving data. It connects via USB, has no ethernet port (I am not the one who bought it) and I would like to make it available on my LAN. Is there any way to do it with software?
When you say "make it available on my LAN" do you mean "make it available to all users on the LAN" or do you mean "make it available to my user on multiple systems"?
And when you say "my Fedora32 computer" do you mean (as found in another thread) the computer named "smb" or "ws1"? Or another computer?
On 2020-07-23 17:26, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-07-24 02:59, Bob Goodwin wrote:
I have a WD 4TB external hard drive connected to my Fedora32 computer on which I have been saving data. It connects via USB, has no ethernet port (I am not the one who bought it) and I would like to make it available on my LAN. Is there any way to do it with software?
When you say "make it available on my LAN" do you mean "make it available to all users on the LAN" or do you mean "make it available to my user on multiple systems"?
And when you say "my Fedora32 computer" do you mean (as found in another thread) the computer named "smb" or "ws1"? Or another computer?.
. "my Fedora32 computer" is this one, WS1. The external drive is presently connected via USB to ws1. I also have a Fedora 31 computer WS2 on the same LAN. I would like ws2 to have access to that external drive also. Presently that would require moving the USB plug which can be done obviously but is quite inconvenient./I assume if the Mybook had been a different model with an ethernet port it would work just as it does now and I hoped that might be possible with an adapter but it appears the adapter would need to be powered, the one I have is not./
On 7/23/20 3:51 PM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
"my Fedora32 computer" is this one, WS1. The external drive is presently connected via USB to ws1. I also have a Fedora 31 computer WS2 on the same LAN. I would like ws2 to have access to that external drive also. Presently that would require moving the USB plug which can be done obviously but is quite inconvenient./I assume if the Mybook had been a different model with an ethernet port it would work just as it does now and I hoped that might be possible with an adapter but it appears the adapter would need to be powered, the one I have is not./
A USB external drive is a USB device, not a USB host. You can't connect a USB ethernet adaptor to it. You can get smarter ones that have ethernet ports, but they are a lot more expensive.
Is there some reason you don't want to use nfs? That's the easiest typical way to share the drive. Or as someone else mentioned, depending on how you want to use it, sshfs could be even easier.
On 2020-07-23 19:24, Samuel Sieb wrote:
Is there some reason you don't want to use nfs? That's the easiest typical way to share the drive. Or as someone else mentioned, depending on how you want to use it, sshfs could be even easier.
. /I do use the NFS for putting data where I can transfer it between computers at times. I probably should not have asked this question here, I just didn't give it enough thought. Just thought there should be a better way than using adapters that are mainly intend for connecting portable computers to ethernet. I have no problem using it as it is, just annoyed that it is not on both computers .../
On Thu, 2020-07-23 at 20:46 -0400, Bob Goodwin wrote:
On 2020-07-23 19:24, Samuel Sieb wrote:
Is there some reason you don't want to use nfs? That's the easiest typical way to share the drive. Or as someone else mentioned, depending on how you want to use it, sshfs could be even easier.
. /I do use the NFS for putting data where I can transfer it between computers at times. I probably should not have asked this question here, I just didn't give it enough thought. Just thought there should be a better way than using adapters that are mainly intend for connecting portable computers to ethernet. I have no problem using it as it is, just annoyed that it is not on both computers .../
As Samuel said, to be accessible from more than one place without switching plugs it either has to be a server (e.g. a NAS) or plugged into a server (your PC).
poc
On Fri, 24 Jul 2020 at 07:11, Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, 2020-07-23 at 20:46 -0400, Bob Goodwin wrote:
On 2020-07-23 19:24, Samuel Sieb wrote:
Is there some reason you don't want to use nfs? That's the easiest typical way to share the drive. Or as someone else mentioned, depending on how you want to use it, sshfs could be even easier.
. /I do use the NFS for putting data where I can transfer it between computers at times. I probably should not have asked this question here, I just didn't give it enough thought. Just thought there should be a better way than using adapters that are mainly intend for connecting portable computers to ethernet. I have no problem using it as it is, just annoyed that it is not on both computers .../
As Samuel said, to be accessible from more than one place without switching plugs it either has to be a server (e.g. a NAS) or plugged into a server (your PC).
If the two PC's are close together there are USB switches, but I assume you would need to manually umount the USB drive before switching:
From an Amazon blurb: "This USB Switch 4 Port device allows up to 2 users to share 4 USB 3.0 peripheral devices, such as printer, scanner,mouse,keyboard or usb dicsk [sic] etc without the need to constantly swap cables or set up complicated network sharing software. It's a great [sic] for use at home if you have multiple PCs or Macs."
On Fri, 2020-07-24 at 07:23 -0300, George N. White III wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jul 2020 at 07:11, Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, 2020-07-23 at 20:46 -0400, Bob Goodwin wrote:
On 2020-07-23 19:24, Samuel Sieb wrote:
Is there some reason you don't want to use nfs? That's the easiest typical way to share the drive. Or as someone else mentioned, depending on how you want to use it, sshfs could be even easier.
. /I do use the NFS for putting data where I can transfer it between computers at times. I probably should not have asked this question here, I just didn't give it enough thought. Just thought there should be a better way than using adapters that are mainly intend for connecting portable computers to ethernet. I have no problem using it as it is, just annoyed that it is not on both computers .../
As Samuel said, to be accessible from more than one place without switching plugs it either has to be a server (e.g. a NAS) or plugged into a server (your PC).
If the two PC's are close together there are USB switches, but I assume you would need to manually umount the USB drive before switching:
From an Amazon blurb: "This USB Switch 4 Port device allows up to 2 users to share 4 USB 3.0 peripheral devices, such as printer, scanner,mouse,keyboard or usb dicsk [sic] etc without the need to constantly swap cables or set up complicated network sharing software. It's a great [sic] for use at home if you have multiple PCs or Macs."
That makes my hair stand on end (what's left of it). How are the various clients supposed to coordinate? What happens if they step on each other's toes? That's what a server takes care of. Failing that, you'll have to do it manually, including making sure that no background processes are trying to access the device.
Do this strictly at your own risk.
poc
On 2020-07-24 06:51, Bob Goodwin wrote:
On 2020-07-23 17:26, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-07-24 02:59, Bob Goodwin wrote:
I have a WD 4TB external hard drive connected to my Fedora32 computer on which I have been saving data. It connects via USB, has no ethernet port (I am not the one who bought it) and I would like to make it available on my LAN. Is there any way to do it with software?
When you say "make it available on my LAN" do you mean "make it available to all users on the LAN" or do you mean "make it available to my user on multiple systems"?
And when you say "my Fedora32 computer" do you mean (as found in another thread) the computer named "smb" or "ws1"? Or another computer?.
. "my Fedora32 computer" is this one, WS1. The external drive is presently connected via USB to ws1. I also have a Fedora 31 computer WS2 on the same LAN. I would like ws2 to have access to that external drive also. Presently that would require moving the USB plug which can be done obviously but is quite inconvenient./I assume if the Mybook had been a different model with an ethernet port it would work just as it does now and I hoped that might be possible with an adapter but it appears the adapter would need to be powered, the one I have is not.
Would you be the only user of the drive?
Would you be using the drive only from a Fedora host?
Do you expect the usage to be heavy?
The drive needs to be always available or from time to time?
If the answers to the above are "Yes, Yes, No, time-to-time", then George's suggestion of sshfs would make perfect sense.
On Thu, 23 Jul 2020 at 16:00, Bob Goodwin bobgoodwin@fastmail.us wrote:
I have a WD 4TB external hard drive connected to my Fedora32 computer on which I have been saving data. It connects via USB, has no ethernet port (I am not the one who bought it) and I would like to make it available on my LAN. Is there any way to do it with software?
Do you want to use your Fedora 32 system as the server? Are you ruling out NFS and Samba? What OS's will the clients run?
If clients won't be using a lot of data, sshfs might be an option.
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Bob Goodwin -
Ed Greshko -
George N. White III -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Richard Shaw -
Samuel Sieb