Help me mount an FTP server as a local drive in Linux

November 21, 2005 6:13 AM

Is it possible to mount an FTP server in Linux and use it as a local drive?

I'm using a laptop with SUSE 10 and an Xbox with Xbox Media Center. They are connected to each other and the internet using a network switch.

When I want to put files onto the Xbox I simply use Konqueror to browse to the Xbox's IP address (when the Xbox is in Xbox Media Center it is acting as an FTP server) and type in my user name and password. That is all good, but I would like to be able to load music that is on the Xbox into my iPod using GTKPod. For GTKPod to be able to find the music I think I need to mount the Xbox as a local drive. Is there some kind of fstab magic that will let me do this?

posted by sveskemus to Computers & Internet (19 answers total)

Pretty sure your xbox must be modded (or unmodded but running the Linux Xbox distro) to do that, but maybe someone else will correct me
posted by poppo at 6:21 AM on November 21, 2005

Response by poster: Oh yeah, sorry I forgot to mention that. My Xbox is modded.
posted by sveskemus at 6:23 AM on November 21, 2005

google turned up this - not used it myself.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:23 AM on November 21, 2005

http://lufs.sourceforge.net/lufs/ should do the trick.
posted by ny_scotsman at 6:25 AM on November 21, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks. I'm a bit of a Linux newbie and I'm having trouble installing it. The instructions say that

In order to build LUFS you need to have the running kernel's headers installed. Check whether /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/include is pointing to the running kernel's include dir.

When I run /.configure I get this in return:

checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking target system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking OS... Linux
checking kernel... 2.6.13-15-default
checking kernel support... supported in kernel/Linux/2.6
checking kernel headers... configure: error: not found in /lib/modules/2.6.13-15-default/build/include. please install them!

How do I fix this?
posted by sveskemus at 6:36 AM on November 21, 2005

Another google hit: http://www.xbox100.com/tutorials/xbox.html

About halfway down is a set of tutorials on mounting with SMB
posted by poppo at 6:39 AM on November 21, 2005

sveskemus, I believe perhaps you don't have the kernel package from SuSE installed?

Normally I roll my own kernel, so the headers are where they always should be (/usr/src/linux slinked to the current kernel dir) but I expect SuSE installed just barely enough kernel to get you booting by default.
posted by shepd at 6:49 AM on November 21, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks, poppo, but all I can find on that site is Windows-centric. Am I missing something?

shepd: I have no idea what you're talking about. :-)

I searched YaST for "kernel" and it seems I have kernel-default and kernel-default-nongpl installed. Is that wrong, somehow? Is there anything else I should install?
posted by sveskemus at 7:00 AM on November 21, 2005

Is there a kernel-headers package, or something similarly named?

I don't know about SuSE, but with most distributions, the 'normal' kernel packages are just the compiled kernel and modules, and the header files are a seperate package.
posted by Godbert at 7:22 AM on November 21, 2005

sves, in linux you can emulate windows file/net sharing with "samba". if you're just starting with linux, then this will require some reading as well (but actually, everything you do will): Animated SUSE tutorial on SMB

(warning, I have not actually sat thru this)
posted by poppo at 7:24 AM on November 21, 2005

Not familiar with SuSe, but try installing the kernel-source package, it should include the kernel headers.
posted by atrazine at 7:25 AM on November 21, 2005

by the way, i should have mentioned you can automatically mount SMB partitions from fstab
posted by poppo at 7:25 AM on November 21, 2005

Response by poster: There is no package named kernel-headers or anything like that. I installed kernel-source, but I still get the same error message when i try to install LUFS.

(That is "checking kernel headers... configure: error: not found in /lib/modules/2.6.13-15-default/build/include. please install them!")

Thanks for that link, poppo. I will check it out.
posted by sveskemus at 7:37 AM on November 21, 2005

Another vote for SMB.
posted by ori at 10:18 AM on November 21, 2005

Sveskemus, I think that you need to link to the kernel source in the appropriate place to finish that build:
uname -r will give you the kernel version, and ls /usr/src should show you a linux-version directory.
sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-version/ /usr/src/linux will link the generic and versioned directories;
sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux//lib/modules/`uname-r`/build should link it to the proper place.
posted by wzcx at 11:15 AM on November 21, 2005

also, take a look here at FuseFTP. FUSE replaced LUFS a while ago, and recently made "news" when it was included in the main kernel tree.
posted by wzcx at 11:16 AM on November 21, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks to all of you for your help. I have not been able to install LUFS or FuseFTP.

I have installed the kernel-source package and linked the Linux directories as described by wzcx. But I still get the error messages basically saying that I need to install the kernel headers.

I will try and look into Samba and see if I can figure it out.

For now I will just have to copy the files from the Xbox to my computer before I copy them to the iPod. It's kind of annoying to have to do this, but it seems I don't have the 1337 h4xx0r sk1llz to install LUFS or FuseFTP. :'(
posted by sveskemus at 2:34 PM on November 21, 2005

You mean 'H4X0r', right? :-)

I think whatever SUSE's version of "make modules" or depmod or whatever their version is that creates the module dependencies is probably necessary here.
posted by stovenator at 3:55 PM on November 21, 2005

I also use smb to mount a Windows share in Fedora Core 4. Every time I boot, I run this command:

mount -t smbfs //192.168.1.245/mp3$ /home/root/mp3

The ip address, is of course, the ip of my Windows box. And I have a share called mp3. You can change the mount point to suit you :)
posted by starscream at 2:32 PM on November 22, 2005