Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Raspberry Pi Around the
House
Your Raspberry Pi has one handy feature when it comes to household projects: its
size. You can easily hide it in a wall or behind a piece of furniture or put it inside larger
build projects like robots and costumes.
This chapter will give you ideas for using your Raspberry Pi for assorted projects
around the house, from the practical (like
Hack #31
, printing from all your computers
to one printer) to the simply fun (like
Hack #35
, using your Pi in your next Halloween
costume).
Share Files with Samba
HACK 30
We accept that there's a possibility not all of the computers in your house
run Linux. Some might even use Windows (like that one used for PlayOn
in
Hack #54
). In that case, this hack should help your systems communi-
cate.
Samba is an open source suite of tools for SMB/CIFS clients. In plainspeak, it lets a
Linux computer (like your Raspberry Pi) talk to a Windows machine as if it were a
Windows file or print server.
SMB (Server Message Block) is a protocol for sharing files, printers, and assorted
communications. CIFS (Common Internet File System) is the modern form of SMB.
SMB was designed to run on the NetBIOS API and runs by default on versions of
Windows since Windows 2000. Samba started as a project to reverse engineer SMB
to allow users on Microsoft systems to access files on Sun systems.
Samba works by creating a network share for directories and subdirectories you
choose on your Raspberry Pi. From your Windows machine, you can mount the share
with
smbmount
, and they will look like networked Windows folders. There is also an
smbclient
utility that will feel like using an FTP program, if you're more comfortable
with that method.
