I have a network attached storage unit - a case from Maplin and a 
spare drive I had. It has a smb server and an ftp server, and they 
seem to work, at least, basically. (Mobile Landisk). It is intended to 
use fat32 format and can use its own internal facility for formatting.
I would like to aim at using it on my network maybe for backup with a 
facilty such as rdiff-backup (I think it is based on rsync) for 
example. I am not sure if the device is it is a perfect implementation 
of an smb server.
It has a dhcp server, which is disabled now I am using it with fixed 
IP on the wired LAN.
It seems to work ok for browser based things. The control interface is 
http:// and the user interface is smb:// for copy paste and such.
ftp works I used filezilla.
It has a Host Name, a Group Name, and a couple of folders in the 
Sharing List. I am not initially using passwords if i can avoid it so 
in smb.conf I have kept 'security = share' as commented out still. I 
think it worked with it enabled, but the authentication was an extra 
complication for my newbie state...
I am using kubuntu and or ubuntu, with 7.04 and 7.10 available.
Hoping to communicate with it via a terminal or similar - I see from 
examples that rdiff-backup may be used (which I use in local ways) as 
follows:
rdiff-backup /some/local-dir hostname.net::/whatever/remote-dir
This construction did not work for me. One obvious problem is that the 
(my) hostname does not have  .net on the end, and I am working in a 
home LAN, if that makes any difference. And I get success only when 
using its IP address for anything, maybe the hostname is not being 
resolved where it should be (?)
I have had a brief initial look at smbclient and smbmount, and have 
even reached a point of getting a '>' response, but cannot get 
sensibly any further, or see how I could use them with, say, 
rdiff-backup for example.
General thoughts, and detail suggestions would be much appreciated!
-- 
alan cocks
Kubuntu user#10391