HomeHub 6 / Smart Hub USB Mount - Fix

Got my hands on a BT Smart Hub Router

Decided to replace my existing Plusnet provided router, in order to dispense with the separate modem-router setup. All the config went well, and was up and running. Thought I would try out the usb port with a usb powered external hard drive, labelled 1TBF32, formatted ntfs. I could see it in Thunar if I typed smb://api/1TBF32 (or smb://192.168.1.254/1TBF32) but that was as far as things would go, i could not access it.

Now I am running Xubuntu 20.04 LTS, which installs, by default, enough samba to get things working in Thunar, but not enough for some older things. What was needed, given I wasn't intending to have any samba shares on my computer: smbclient.

sudo apt install smbclient

A reboot is required to get this working, and now typing

smb://api/1TBF32

provided read and write access to the usb drive :)

Now I needed to mount this drive on start up.

Create a mount directory:

sudo mkdir -p /media/HHUSB

Install:

sudo apt install cifs-utils

then edit /etc/fstab

sudo nano /etc/fstab

and add the line

//api/1tbf32  /media/HHUSB  cifs  guest,uid=1000,vers=1.0,iocharset=utf8  0  0

and save. Note  the vers=1.0 which is specifically required for the HomeHub USB to mount, and the lower case label. 

Now remount all shares in your fstab with the command:

sudo mount -a

and with any luck your Smart Hub USB drive is mounted and available

...

I have since changed my router to a plusnethubtwo. This meant a small tweak to the fstab entry:

//192.168.1.254/usb1  /media/HHUSB  cifs  guest,uid=1000,vers=1.0,iocharset=utf8  0  0

and I was up and running again