Samba share on pogoplug

[WillieEverlearn]

Forgive me if this topic seems noobish (I am quite new to arch), but I am having some difficulties.
I have a successful samba share up and running, and when I access it from a windows box I can up/download to the external drive that I have plugged into the pogoplug. My problem is that I had planned on putting data on the drive from my Ubuntu box with smbfs, but it would seem that the mounted folder is only ~1 GB (I assume that this is due to the usb stick that I am booted from on the pogoplug). Perhaps someone has an idea of how I could go about transfering files from my linux box to my external drive connected to my pogoplug. Any help would be appreciated, inculding links to other topics that might be helpful.

Thanks

[WarheadsSE]

In this occurrence, I point the share directly at the drive's mount point on the plug.

[WillieEverlearn]

Ah...so simple. I will do just that when i get home. Thank you for helping this idiot with such a simple solution.

[WillieEverlearn]

Ok so i believe that I have the mounting issue licked...now I am wondering about file transfer.
I am planning on using my pogoplug to serve my media files (I am thinking about ripping my DVDs...any tips/experiences with that would be helpful) on my ubuntu machine, and transfering the mp4s (would another format be better?) to the external drives attached to my pogoplug.
So I suppose my questions would be:
1. What would be the best video format to use for my media center (XBMC)?
2. How could I script a transfer from my ubuntu to my pogoplug share?
(I am thinking about keeping the files on the ubuntu for backup)
3. Am I making this harder than it needs to be?

[WillieEverlearn]

Should I be trying to use rsync to do this?

[WarheadsSE]

MP4 is OK, the plug won't be transcoding, rsync is good, it's really that simple.

[sambul13]

Is it possible to config Samba to dismount corresponding shares, i.e hide Samba folders where a USB drive partitions were mounted, once the drive attached to Pogo is dismounted or switched off?

Also, how to make Samba hide its shared folders in Windows, when Samba on Pogo is stopped or Pogo is shutdown? Otherwise Win Explorer stalls every time Pogo is shutdown.

[WarheadsSE]

I suppose you could make use of (probably write) a bunch of really custom pile of stuff to handle reconfiguring & then restarting samba to not share the drive that aren't mounted.

As for having samba hide the device & shares when it is shutdown, but windows 7 still shows it... Call Microsoft and bitch to them. That is a property of their software. The device is OFF, it sure as hell isn't communicating up from the grave.

[sambul13]

I'm surprised that despite having multitude of settings most people never use or know about, including multiple config files option, Samba team never developed a basic config feature allowing to auto hide (stop sharing) an empty share once its drive is unmounted. I contacted 3 key devs in Samba team to add such feature, and never get reply or explanation from any of them. They don't have a meaningful forum either. May be there are other ways to communicate with them...

[sambul13]

Anyone can tell, if Samba Net Tool for admins is included in Samba package available in local repository, and where its stored when installed? If not, it would be nice to add this tool allowing to create and delete Samba shares dynamically by command instead of via config.