Problem with SAMBA / USB / RT-AC56R / authentication.

[Sven Golly]

BACKGROUND: I love my RT-AC56R. It works well 90% of the time. Thinking I could extend its life a bit, I installed FreshTomato on it. Bad move. Way too complicated and I found that configuring a 2nd guest network would literally remove internet access from the ethernet ports. So after going down an endless rabbithole of trying to downgrade / backgrade, I finally managed to do so by installing Asuswrt-Merlin on it. I managed to bring it all the way to 384.6.

PROBLEM: No matter what I do, I cannot get Samba to work correctly when guest access is turned OFF. It works fine with guest access ON.

I can add the user nam

e and password just fine to the access lists. I attempt to map the network drive (ie. \\<routername>\) and browse to the folder (ie. Documents). However, when I put in the user name & password, Windows 10 gives me "Access denied". I have tried different levels of SAMBA. Set Master Browser yes/no. Simpler share naming yes/no. (Not touching Wins server). What am I doing wrong? This used to work under ASUSWRT firmware BUT I had to enable SMB 1.0. It would be nice to use the Merlin firmware since it's got Samba 2.

SYSTEM: I am running a new HP Envy, Windows 10 Home, 20H2. The drive off the router is a 2TB Seagate in a generic USB 3.0 enclosure. I am directly connected via ethernet to LAN1 port.

HELP!!

 

[Sven Golly]

PROBLEM: No matter what I do, I cannot get Samba to work correctly when guest access is turned OFF. It works fine with guest access ON.

SOLVED:

Just circling back since I think I solved the problem. I brought the USB disk setup (enclosure & 2TB Seagate drive) back to my desktop and discovered that for each folder I had defined, the router was creating a separate partition!! Huh? It was originally formatted as MBR NTFS disk. So I don't know if Samba was seeing weirdness in the drive and went wonky or what. I can't think that's expected behavior. Anyway, I decided to start all over and reformatted the drive as EXT4 after wiping what I could with Partition Wizard. After reconnecting the drive to the router, VOILA. I could map the drive in Windows 10 AND used the second set of credentials I made for password protected R/W access.

Since I didn't duplicate the original setup of NTFS, I can't say specifically what brought back the login functionality. But it all seems to work. I'm guessing something was stored on the drive that made it a bad configuration. But not being an expert in this stuff, I really have no clue. Oh and I chose EXT4 since I've read many comments on the web saying Ext filesystems, Samba and Asus seem to be happier together than NTFS. No clue why that's true either but I always believe what I read on the Internet.