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    Is there a way to share the PFSence Systems Optical drive for remote devices

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • R
      raelrigs
      last edited by

      Hi, i have been running a Dell Optiplex 850 as my pfsence router and i am very happy with it indeed, its doing everything thing i ask of it (which isn't a lot compared to some of you) very well indeed.
      i have recently changed over from a windows desktop to a Macbook Pro and right away i am missing the lack of optical drive.
      with the mac there is (i have been told) a way to use a remote optical drive from for example a windows shared drive. i can vaguely remember doing this way back when my first pc was windows 98se for a bit of a laugh.
      so to my main question,

      is there away in PFSence to share the somewhat idle DVD\CD-RW drive that is in my Dell so that my optical drive less macs and PC's can access it over the network.

      why would i want this you ask, well i have a really large collection of DVD's i would like to digitise to my new Plex server that is sitting on a ubuntu GUIless server environment.
      i also have years and years worth of DVD and CD Backup disks of family pictures and home movies.
      i would like to consolidate all of this to my new server and have a single large backup location.

      does any one know if this can be done.

      thanks in advance.

      RaelRigs

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      • D
        divsys
        last edited by

        The short answer (IMHO) is: this isn't a good idea.

        The longer version - sharing your optical drive  across your network might be possible via something like Samba, but it's likely to open some security holes in your firewall.
        Definitely not work the risks just to reuse an existing piece of hardware, especially given how cheap an external DVD drive can be acquired.  No USB support for an external drive on the Macbook?

        If you've already got a Plex server in place, I'd look at installing and sharing the optical drive from there, makes a lot more sense.

        -jfp

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        • K
          kejianshi
          last edited by

          Yeah - install samba and share it.  Attach a printer and a hard drive with a bunch of movies on it and share that too.

          (I think its a bad idea)

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