Samba error accessing share, empty log

Hi! I'm trying to use Samba with an attached HDD but I can't access the unit at all. The weird thing is that the logs are empty, so I can't see the reason of the error... Android and Windows tell me that there's been a problem accessing the unit, but nothing else. On the router I can't see anything with logread, dmesg, or in samba logs. Any advice?

  • is the disk mounted?
  • can you list/read/write the filesystem from router as root?
  • have you created additional user account on the router?
  • can you list/read/write the filesystem from router as this user?
  • does the user have a password and smbpasswd set?
  • Disk mounted with ntfs-3g
  • root can list, create and delete files and folders in the disk
  • I've created an user with home folder and I can log via ssh with it
  • This user can list, create and delete files and folders in the disk too
  • The user has a password and smbpasswd defined

If I open \routerIP in Windows it asks me for user:password, I can log succesfully with the created user and I can see the HDD shared, but when I click on the HDD I get an error and can't open it. So I assume Samba is working but it doesn't like my HDD... Also I don't understand why it isn't writing at all to the logfile. I've defined a new log that it created automatically at restart but it's completely empty. Shouldn't it be there a "Starting service with PID XXX" or something like that? The log level is 3, so it should be writing a lot of stuff...

afaik logging functionality is not compiled into samba on openwrt (because of diskspace).

try with identical user:pw at router as in windows, you should not get a prompt then and avoid windows bug that prevents opening a second smb connection with different username (first session might be guest-user)

Still nothing... I've been trying even with root, switching to share mode, etc. The only hint I've been able to get is trying to connect through prompt, where Windows says "System Error 59, Unexpected network error".

try sharing another directory directly from your router to rule out external hdd as source of failure

You can also try exfat on the disk instead of the ntfs-3g driver. If you have enough nvram or setup a extroot you can try samba4 from this repo: http://bin.entware.net/

Alternative if you compile your own firmware against master i have this feed with the latest samba 4.8 ready: https://github.com/Andy2244/openwrt-extra