Samba

You can access the MiSTer through Samba network.

Why Should You Use Samba?

Using Samba you can work with files much the same way that you work with files locally on your PC, with a File Explorer, clicking and dragging, etc... This is much easier for most people.

Samba (also known as SMB) is the native protocol for Windows shares. MiSTer already has FTP and SSH services, but Samba has a special feature: Windows treats Samba shares as a local filesystem.

For example, with FTP/SFTP,, if you want to view or edit a file, then you need to download it fully first. With Samba, only a small required portion of file will be loaded. If you are editing a large file of 100MB+, then it makes big difference. Similarly, if you want to use a HEX editor, you don't need to download the whole file. Just open the file in a HEX editor and only small portion will be loaded where you can quickly edit required bytes and save it back quickly.

This means that with Samba access, you can mount VHD files on your PC without downloading them! Use a utility such as ImDisk to can mount VHD files as a local disk (mount it as removable store for easier un-mounting).

Instructions:

By default Samba service is not active. Follow the following instructions to turn it on:

1. Rename /media/fat/linux/_samba.sh to /media/fat/linux/samba.sh in the terminal/console on the MiSTer by running the following command:

mv /media/fat/linux/_samba.sh /media/fat/linux/samba.sh

2. Reboot the MiSTer
3. You can access the MiSTer in your File Explorer either by IP address (e.g. \\192.168.1.100\) or by hostname (e.g. \\MiSTer or \\mister as it is not case sensitive).

OPTIONAL: Edit this file if you want a specific username and password (default is user root with pass 1)

Notes:

• Make sure you've closed all opened remote files and un-mounted all remote VHDs before restarting the MiSTer or start the cores using the same VHDs in order to prevent the data corruption!
• MiSTer's default samba workgroup is MiSTer. Usually you will not need this to log in.
• To map the MiSTer as a "Network Drive" in Windows, you will need to use a share path (e.g. \\MiSTer\sdcard\) instead of just the hostname. This is due to a limitation of Windows itself ever since Windows Vista. It can be disabled by enabling SMBv1 client services manually in Windows but this is not advised as SMBv1 is not secure and has multiple security exploits.
• Alternatively, you can just "Map Network Location" instead to \\mister\ directly to avoid this.

Troubleshooting:

If you're using a Windows OS (Vista and above) while trying to access the share and the credentials do not work, there may be a possibility that the LAN Manager authentication level is not being worked out correctly between the Windows OS and the Samba daemon on MiSTer.

The error message may manifest itself as a The specified network password is not correct error. A fix is to lower the Samba NTLM authentication level on the MiSTer to NTLM v1.

This is done with the following steps:

1. SSH into your MiSTer instance.
2. Edit the Samba configuration file.

nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

3. Append under global, where the keyword yes signifies ntlmv1-permitted, which allows for NTLMv1 and above for all clients (against MiSTer). By default the value is not set explicitly and is no, which equates to ntlmv2-only. Further information is specified in the ntlm auth (G) section at https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/smb.conf.5.html.

[global]
   min protocol = SMB2
   ntlm auth = yes

4. Reboot MiSTer or restart the Samba daemon.

/etc/init.d/S91smb restart

You should see no errors when manually restarting. e.g.

/root# /etc/init.d/S91smb restart
Shutting down SMB services: OK
Shutting down NMB services: OK
Starting SMB services: OK
Starting NMB services: OK

Alternatively, on the Windows OS, change the Windows registry HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\LMCompatibilityLevel to 3. Note that you may/may not have permission depending on your security policy or Administrator rights. This is described by Microsoft at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/security-policy-settings/network-security-lan-manager-authentication-level.