easy way to share a computer's folder with users on same wifi as computer ?

[vincentm77]

Hi everyone,

I have a computer with Ubuntu connected to a wifi router (FritzBox).
my users (who don't have access to the computer and are not Ubuntu user) can connect their apple/android smartphones to the router (they know the wifi password).


I would like to be able to share the content of a folder (say, /home/vincent/Music ) with these users.

What is the easiest way to do this ?!

I guess I could install a cloud server (nextcloud/owncloud) on the computer, and ask my users to install the corresponding app on their smartphones... I guess this is cumbersome, since i would need to install an web server first to host the cloud server.
Or it is possible to create samba/cifs shares on the computer, which the users could access using their smartphones ?

Thanks !!!
Vincent

[Morbius1]

This may only be a partial answer since I have no idea what android can do but the iPhone issue can be done with Samba.

I have created a samba share of my Public folder on Xubuntu 22.04 by adding a share definition to the end of /etc/samba/smb.conf:

[Pulbic]
path = /home/tester/Public
read only = no
guest ok = yes
force user = tester

The iPhone has a bult in file manager called Files and I can open that up and go to:
Browse > Connect to Server and enter the mDNS host name of my Xubuntu server:

xub2204.local

The Public folder can be opened and it's contents displayed.

There is no need to specify the protocol because iOS and MacOS both assume all network file transfers are Samba ( SMBx ) by default.

[vincentm77]

Thanks Morbius, this sound quite interesting. I m pretty sure that Android can do this as well.
Best,
V

[HermanAB]

The easiest is probably via a small web server. That way anyone can use web browser to access the files. Eg lighttpd.