Sharing external drives via Samba on Linux can be tricky due to permission isolation and mount point ownership.
A reliable solution is to create a bind mount from the external drive path to a clean directory under
/var/samba/.
Test the bind mount interactively (optional):
sudo mount --bind /source/path/ /var/samba/folder/
To make the bind mount persistent across reboots, add an entry to
/etc/fstab:
/var/run/media/user/sysdrives/drive2/Torrenting/distros /var/samba/distropub none bind,ro 0 0
The
,ro flag mounts it read-only. Adjust this if write access is needed, and ensure permissions on the directory allow Samba to access files.
Now add the share definition in
/etc/samba/smb.conf:
[Distros]
comment = Distros
browsable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = yes
create mask = 755
path = /var/samba/Distros
valid users = user
Mount everything defined in
/etc/fstab and restart Samba:
sudo mount -a
sudo systemctl restart smb