Share Raspberry Pi writable folder on network

Question

To create a new folder I use :

mkdir folder (create folder)
sudo chmod 777 folder (allow all users read/write access)

How can this folder be shared between other PI's on network, so it can be written to / read from other machines on network ? Machines includes Windows and other Raspberry PI's but I'm not too worried about Windows if that is too much hassle.

I could perhaps use Tomcat server with simple form but this seems overkill for this task.

Update :

Thanks to @Joseph suggestion samba did the trick.

However after running initial samba installation I received error :

The following NEW packages will be installed: samba samba-common-bin tdb-tools 0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 6,081 kB of archives. After this operation, 36.1 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main samba armhf 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 404 Not Found Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main samba-common-bin armhf 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 404 Not Found Get:1 http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main tdb-tools armhf 1.2.10-2 [25.9 kB] Fetched 25.9 kB in 0s (52.3 kB/s) Failed to fetch http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/s/samba/samba_3.6.6-6+deb7u4_armhf.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/s/samba/samba-common-bin_3.6.6-6+deb7u4_armhf.deb 404 Not Found E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?

After running "apt-get update" and re-running installer everything worked fine. What operation does "apt-get update" perform in order to allow installation to complete correctly ?

Also I found this tutorial helpful, (mentions mapping network drive). As I have multiple PI's on network I connect using custom hostname rather than one specified (raspberrypi) http://www.maketecheasier.com/turn-raspberry-pi-into-file-server/

• Kolban: Just a thought, but when I went down this path, I opened up a share from a Windows machine and then mounted it on my PIs. The windows machine owned the disk and all the other PIs could read and write to it. Depending on your usage, this may actually be a better and more stable solution. As @Joseph answered, I too used Samba.

Answer 1

You can use Samba share. Here is a nice tutorial on how to share files/folder over network including Windows support using Samba.

It works as a NAS too.

apt-get update basically updates the list of available packages. The first time you tried to install the packages you got the errors because the lists were incomplete or were pointing to resources that no longer existed.

Before installing any new packages you should always update (apt-get update) and upgrade (apt-get upgrade) your existing packages to their latest versions.

• blue-sky: thanks, please see update, what action does "apt-get update" perform ?

Answer 2

Don't chmod 777 anything. forget that comand exists, and never use it again. Use ssh. ssh is 1000 times better than samba any day, and it works on everything. https://askubuntu.com/questions/20105/why-shouldnt-var-www-have-chmod-777

Set up ssh: http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ssh/

there are many great ways to achieve what you are asking. you can automate, and send remote commands with ssh. Once you have an ssh server you might like scp, (secure Copy) which has a gui windows version and a comandline option.

Windows Gui: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

Tutorial: http://www.computerhope.com/unix/scp.htm

You can set up synch with ssh in a simple script.

• blue-sky: thanks but samba is working for me so will stick with that for now