RT-N66U Media/FTP server setup

[Chiba]

Hi,

I couldn't really find any information on this, so I'm posting here in hopes that someone can help me with this.
I plugged a 400GB HDD into my router. Recognition was no problem but now I'm a little stuck on how to get everything set up.

I basically want to create a media server/network storage that every device within the network has read and write access to. It will mainly be used to store and stream home videos and photos. So for users within the network I don't need a password, they can have direct access.
In addition to this I want to make the HDD accessible from outside, so I guess setting up the FTP server would be a good idea. For access from outside a password will be required of course.

My problem is now that I can't really find a good documentation on how to do all this. The official manual is not very helpful and I did some trial and error myself, but can't really get it to work the way I want.
I seem to have set up the FTP server correctly, but after transferring a file for test purposes I couldn't see it anywhere on the harddisc.

Could someone point me into the right direction to achieve all this?

 

[Codyormoe]

So everyone can access the files just go to the miscellaneous settings tab of the media server and make sure the workgroup name is the same as the rest of your network. Then in Network Place(Samba) Share make sure you enable sharing, nothing more(no share with account or anything like that, just enable sharing). After that, the drive should show up in your network like any other computer and you should have free access to read/write to it.

I have no idea about the FTP sharing though as I have no use for it as of yet.

 

[Chiba]

Thanks a lot, that worked for me. If one knows what to do it seems so easy.

I will fiddle around with the FTP settings some more, I'm feeling close to a breakthrough.

 

[Codyormoe]

Did you get the ftp figured out?

I would like to set up an ftp server that requires a password and can access only the network drive. I have some stuff on there that my brother wants to be able to download since burning it all to disk would take tons of disks and too much of my time.

I've never even thought about any of this before so if you could let me know, step by step how to accomplish this, I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

 

[Chiba]

I couldn't try yet, because I can't use the HDD that I wanted to use. But as soon as I get to it I will let you know how it worked for me.

 

[Chiba]

I set up the FTP server today and so far it seems very easy. Just go through the 3 steps provided by the admin tool. So far it seems to work fine, I haven't tried much more yet.
It would be really nice to be able to set up some kind of server to stream media from (to the internet, not within the private network), but I don't know if it's possible and how to do it.

 

[Codyormoe]

I did end up setting up an ftp. For some reason it never worked right if I used the AiDisk wizard, but if I set all the settings manually, it worked fine. I've been using my brother to test out the different settings, ie: passwords, read/write privelages, etc. All seem to be working just fine.

I have no idea about streaming though, my brother just wanted to be able to download the music/movies/programs, I've put on my network drive.

I wish I had more time to mess around with this router, it seems like it could be capable of great things.

 

[shantanugoel]

One problem I see with the inbuilt ftp server, even though they are using vsftpd, is that there is not jailing of the users or sharing just one particular dir. It shares all dirs and then you have to go through a painful process of setting up read/write permissions for all.
Maybe setting up some nvram values directly will help. But in any case, I installed proftpd through entware and using it for now.