So, I solved the problem. Although I couldn't figure out the reason. I was able to access the device via the Samba protocol by specifying \\192.168.50.1 as the address.
\\192.168.50.1 would be how you access a network drive using samba because network discovery of smb only worked in samba on smb1. Due to changes by Microsoft you would need to add additional perimeters to your smb.conf file in order for other smb version discovery to work which is not included by Asus.
The samba version running off the router is likely 3.6.25 so unfortunately that’s the reason no smb3 which was introduced in samba4.
One of the reasons I don’t use it off router, unless you want to downgrade to using smb2.
Under smb (same as server) in the smb.conf you should be able to add “client min protocol =“ then add the smb2 dialect if it's not working.
Then proceed to use cifs to mount as a linux client or map a network drive in windows. As long as the min protocol = smb2 on the routers smb.conf then it should work with Windows client min protocol = smb2
Alternatively you could use samba4 the entware version. Samba4 is not available on ASUS routers without installing the entware. Meaning smb3 isn’t supported which is default on windows I believe. Smb1 is disabled by default on windows 10 & 11.
opkg install samba4-server
SSH into your router.
Do this:
- have jffs enabled
- have ssh or telnet access to your router enabled
- log in using either of the two
- create the file /jffs/configs/smb.conf.add
- add the parameters to smb.conf.add
- reboot router
You can look for examples online for the smb.conf configuration note that this file handles all of your shares meaning with using this it may ignore the shares already setup. This file should override anything the gui says. By default ASUS Merlin/gnuton would overwrite the normal smb.conf file each reboot so you need an add this config file to replace the smb.conf file the gui uses. This configuration file will be used each reboot replacing the content of the tmp smb.conf file the system uses by default.
I’m not sure off the top of my head the location of the main smb.conf file (check the tmp directory) the built in Samba server uses but you can copy its contents to the smb.conf.add file to make your life easier.
By the same respects if you use entware samba4 it will likely ignore the gui and rely solely on the entwares smb.conf file which is likely separate from the built in smb.conf file or the smb.conf.add file. Samba4 entware may also need a startup script to tell it to start each boot. (Not needed for the built in samba server)
Refer to this:
https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin.ng/wiki/User-scripts
The smb.conf configuration file is how you’d setup samba on any Linux machine without a gui. But because this router is for the most part read-only you need to use jffs or equivalent to have a writable file.
You can refer to the man file for additional parameters. Avoid the tutorials that tell you how to tune or optimize samba they are usually incorrect or obsolete functions with modern samba versions.
https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/smb.conf.5.html