The TG582n router has a USB port towards the back of the left-hand side. There are 3 different uses for this:

plugging in a 3G mobile broadband dongle, which can add 3G connectivity
plugging in a USB storage device, which can allow content sharing server(s) to share its contents
plugging in a USB printer, which can allow a printer sharing server to share the printer

3G broadband

Content Sharing

Content sharing provides a way to share the contents of a USB storage device to machines on the LAN (or further afield). It provides some rudimentary network attached storage.

The content sharing server uses a separate 'virtual' interface, which grabs its IP via DHCP. It will use the first DHCP address it can, this can be fairly catastrophic with a /30 (see image below) - it's possible to add an extra DHCP pool which just serves 10.0.0.137 (for example) for the content server.

View the IP which content sharing has on the web interface: - Home Network - Interfaces - Local Network:

Note here content sharing has taken the only available IP!

To view the list of interfaces:

:eth bridge list

To remove this interface, and therefore to stop it grabbing an IP:

:eth bridge ifdetach intf virt brname bridge
:eth bridge ifdelete intf virt brname bridge
:saveall

If one wishes to use content sharing, the available servers are:

CIFS server (aka SMB, Samba)
UPNP AV server
FTP server

The TG582n can use a USB storage device with partitions formatted as FAT32 or EXT2/3/4. There are some restrictions - with the following disk

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1              63  65529134  65529072  31.3G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2        65529135 229376069 163846935  78.1G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb3       229376070 397148229 167772160    80G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4       397148230 625142447 227994218 108.7G 83 Linux

content sharing sees all partitions except the NTFS one (/dev/sdb2), but doesn't correctly read the EXT4 partition (/dev/sdb4). Whether this is because of partition size, or start sector, or EXT4-ness, is TBD. (/dev/sdb3 is EXT3).

CIFS server

The current config can be seen with

:contentsharing cifs list

If one enables the CIFS server with

:contentsharing cifs config state=enabled

then it's possible to connect to the CIFS server on the previously found IP address in any of the usual CIFS ways. Note that the CIFS server uses old LANMAN authentication - so Samba users may need to add something like:

 # Be able to connect to old servers (e.g. TG582n content sharing)
client lanman auth = yes
client ntlmv2 auth = no

to smb.conf. It's then possible to authenticate with a router username/password - at least, the Administrator account credentials work OK.

For example, with the content sharing server on 192.168.1.32:

$ smbclient -U Administrator //192.168.1.32/Disk_a1
Enter Administrator's password: 
Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 2.2.12]
smb: \> dir
  .                                   D        0  Tue Jan 20 16:12:42 2015
  ..                                  D        0  Tue Jan 20 15:05:02 2015
  HDR_FOX_T2_upgrade.hdf              A 24108401  Wed Jul  2 17:41:50 2014
  why_I_love_aaisp.pdf                A   359760  Tue Jan 20 16:12:05 2015 

		61543 blocks of size 32768. 60796 blocks available
smb: \>

although on Linux /sbin/mount.cifs might be more useful than smbclient.

Note that the share named above 'Disk_a1' is the share available if the disk/partition is not a 'Managed partition' (see below). If the disk/partition is a 'Managed partition' the available share names change (to 'Shared' and 'Media') and the root directory of the partition is no longer accessible from content sharing.

UPNP AV server

UPNP AV is a media server to facilitate playing media files across a network (usually a LAN). It can be enabled by:

:contentsharing upnpav config state=enabled

Then the content on the USB storage device can be shared. The USB storage device has to be setup to have the required directory structure - it appears this has to be done on the web interface - select Toolbox - Content Sharing - Configure and make the disk/partition a 'Managed partition'. Note that performing this step changes the share names served from the USB storage device (to 'Shared' and 'Media').

One can then browse the media server with a suitable client. For example, on Linux one can use vlc - select View - Playlist - Local Network - Universal Plug'n'Play - Technicolor TG582n (unless one has changed the default name).

Now it just needs some media files added in the 'Media/Pictures', 'Media/Music' or 'Media/Movies' directories.

FTP server

Enable with:

:contentsharing ftp config state=enabled

The FTP server is only of use if the disk/partition is a managed partition (see above). If the disk/partition is not a managed partition, then there's no home directory available for the FTP server and login fails.

FTP to the content sharing IP address, and login with router username/password (the Administrator credentials work OK). The root directory of the FTP server is the share named 'Shared' - whereas the shared media files for the UPNP AV server are under a share named 'Media'.

File system structure

On a USB storage device which has (at some point) been a managed partition, the file system comprises directories named

Settings
Shared
Media
Media/Pictures
Media/Music
Media/Movies

There's a file 'Settings/manageddisk_marker' which contains a date/time string. The presence/absence/contents of this file doesn't accurately reflect the 'managed disk' status of the disk - the status has to be changed via the web UI.

Printer Sharing

Your author doesn't have a printer with a USB connection, so can't offer much guidance. The command to enable printer sharing would be:

:printersharing LPD config state=enabled

And you'd need to add a queue, a good place to start is:

:printersharing LPD queue menu

Other pages regarding this router

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