How To Share The External MicroSD Folders and Files On A Network?

[pinephoneuser22]

I have read that one can use telnet and ssh to access the Pinefone on a network. That is by command line. Is it possible to make the folders and files of the external microSD card available as shares using Samba or similar so that complex file management can be done using the GUI file management tools of a laptop OS? If so, how does one do this? If not, what options are there?

[Kevin Kofler]

SFTP should work out of the box to access the files if you have SSH already enabled.

But Samba should work too if you install and configure the Samba server on the PinePhone. I would not see why not.

[pinephoneuser22]

Thank you for the ideas. There are two workflows that i am looking into.

1) Connecting the Pinephone directly to a laptop where the external microsSD card is exposed to the laptop as a USB storage device. I did not get a reponse to a forum question about this so it looks like a deadend for now. I think there should be a switch in the settings that turns such functionality on/off (for security purposes), and then it should just work like a USB thumb drive. The Tow-Boot-like functionality of PostmarketOS and Mobium appears to only expose the internal eMMC storage as a USB storage device. Exposing the external microSD card the same way will make it easier for users to transfer and manage documents, photographs, and other, using their computer and OS of choice, making the Pinephone more accessible and useable.

2) Connecting the Pinephone to a network where the external microSD card is exposed as a network share. For similar reasons as above, it is to make it easier for users to do file transfer and management using their computer and OS of choice, making the Pinephone more accessible and useable.

It appears SMB is a possibilty so i am looking into how easy it is to set up. Using SMB would be familiar to power users who use Mac and Windows, not so much for the mainstream user. Do any of the Pinephone OSes have share settings where users can set up SMB sharing in a straight forward manner? Example, on macOS there is a Sharing applet where the user can turn File Sharing on/off, select the folder to share, and set up an access password. And then it just works.

I will also look into using FTP and how easy it is to set up. Although using a FTP GUI client is not as good as the above described workflows, it is better than doing things by command line. I think mainstream user should not be expected to do this.

[Kevin Kofler]

As @alaraajavamma suggested in the other thread (where you asked mainly about the file manager), MTP is also an option, but requires installing an MTP server/responder on the PinePhone, which is not included out of the box. (uMTP-Responder is one of several implementations. Last I checked, they all had poor security though, which is why they are not installed by default.)

And SFTP is not FTP! FTP over SSL/TLS would be FTPS, not SFTP. FTP/FTPS requires installing an FTP server, whereas SFTP is part of SSH. Some (but not all, since it is a completely different protocol) FTP clients support SFTP, there are dedicated clients for proprietary operating systems such as WinSCP (supports SCP and SFTP), and most GNU/Linux file managers support SFTP out of the box (just type the SFTP URL into the folder/address bar).

[TRS-80]

If the rest of the devices on your network are Windows boxes: use Samba. If they are GNU/Linux: use NFS.

Alternatively, use Syncthing, which is cross platform and easiest of all.

[jakfish]

I understand that your druthers are PC/MAC-to-PP, but using FTP on Win10, for me, has been the easiest, PP-to-Win Folder. I have an embarrassing number of legacy umpcs and smb has presented challenges to some of the older, un-updateable OSs (eg Ubuntu 9). Win10 has its own FTP server and the setup is straightforward, or at least as straightforward as MS can be...

Almost every Linux file manager will connect securely to a shared Win10 FTP directory, and if it won't, gftp has never failed me. I don't use MAC but I 'm pretty sure the same success can be generated on Apple.