DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

I didn't realize /etc was on a ram drive and some of the behavior makes alot more sense now.  I could definitely write a script like you suggest to copy over the smb.conf and restart the service when the drive is rebooted and that would get me past the issue I'm having; however, I'd like to understand what has changed such that the web configuration is no longer working properly.  I can define my shares thru the web interface...but...that configuration data is lost at reboot.  I did make a manual change to the smb.conf file...but...it was only a temporary change to enable logging and I was fine with that change being lost.  Other than that, I haven't (intentionally) made any manual samba configuration changes and I'd like to still be able to use the web configuration to create new shares.   So far, I haven't located where the web configuration data for the samba definitions are stored.  Maybe that file has been corrupted or removed somehow.  Any pointers as to where that data is stored ?  Thanks again for your help -- Jeff Gaiche

Jeff and JoBadluck,

It really is supposed to work as you expect.  The Web UI is supposed to save your settings in a place that is retained through a reboot and then copy them to the ram drive on each reboot.  Mine works OK in that respect.  Bq was pointing out that if you change things in /etc, the changes won't persist.

I don't know the cause of the problem.  Is it possible that you've installed or changed something that could cause this?  I suppose I would try disabling fun_plug or any other add-ins to see if you can get the settings to persist through a reboot.  That would at least narrow it down.

Since you're not using fun_plug, you should probably look in the D-Link forum (http://forums.dlink.com/), since you have an unmodified unit.

The stock firmware stores your defined shares in a place where you cannot see them via file sharing.   You'd have to install a fun_plug that gives you shell access to see.

I guess if you are really curious, you could try it "safely" as follows:

The wiki: http://dns323.kood.org/howto:fun_plug show you how to put a simple fun_plug to just "test" it:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Simple fun_plug
#
dmesg > /mnt/HD_a2/dmesg.out

This just writes a file to your shared volume that you can then look at via a share that you have defined.

You could change the last line to

cp /mnt/HD_a4/.systemfile/.smb.ses /mnt/HD_a2/smb_ses.out
cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /mnt/HD_a2/smb_conf.out
chmod 777 /mnt/HD_a2/smb_ses.out /mnt/HD_a2/smb_conf.out

This ".smb_ses" file contains your defined shares.  The GUI stores your changes here and they get written to HD_a4, which is a small part of your disk that the 323 set up for this sort of purpose.

At boot time, this file is concatenated to a "default" smb conf file and placed in /etc/samba, which is the file that is copied in the second line.  The third line just makes sure you can erase the files from the share when done.

If you run this (follow the wiki instructions), the contents of the two files will be interesting.  If there is no smb_ses.out file, then your defined shares are not getting stored for some reason.  If the smb_ses.out file has your defined shares, but they are not in the smb_conf.out file, then there is a problem with the concatenation.

http://dns323.kood.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1714 suggests that the program that does the concatenation is failing, saying that it cannot find HD_a4.  This could be your problem too.  Is it possible to start over, back up your data, and have the 323 reformat your disk?

Any further investigation will probably need telnet access.

Yeah, it is likely that your HD_a4 got clobbered somehow.  I don't know why.