Ive bought an external media player that is seen as a harddrive. Ive connected the drive via USB with a problem but would now like the N800 to act as a file server.

Im wanting to connect the N800 / USB connected drive from a windows laptop across my WLAN.

I know very little about the machine but guessing I need samba so something like this. anything lightweight ? ive even tried looking for an FTP daemon without luck.

So if I understand you correctly..

You have..

n800 + external media player/external HDD connected to a wireless router.

Wireless router connects to Windows laptop. And then you want to access the n800 + external media player/external HDD across the WLAN?

If I have processed this correctly, then have you tried ssh (secure shell?). You could use WinSCP to connect to an ssh server on the n800 (install openssh server on the tablet). Then access the external drive by browsing to /media/USB (I think it's called USB).

Thanks for the input
Seems the N800 has very little support from Nokia passing the buck to the community. Almost all helpful applications have been ported by users, its a shame I dont have time or know how to do this myself.

With my Gentoo box I simpally create a samba share for the windows machine to use. Its much easier for family to have a (drive F network drive allowing the drag-n-drop of media files.

Ive found and installed proFTPd for N800 but this needed me to change Windows services to allow the stopped built in FTP IE hooks. Im still looking for a method of having a network share on the N800 for an extarnal drive.

For something done in Win3.11 im amazed this device cant create network shares out the box.

If your wanting to run a samba like service I think you might have to try another desktop environment like Debian or KDE (see alternatives forum on here). I haven't experimented much with that. I only use what I posted to sync files between my tablet and my computers over wireless. It could work for a file server but you'd have to keep the ssh tunnel alive.

Seriously, SSH and WinSCP is probably your best bet. If you have SSH, you've got SFTP, which is like FTP, only "S"ecure!

That being said, the N800 really isn't a sensible file server. It is a mobile device, and having an external device dangling off of it makes it not-very-mobile. It makes an excellent client for a fileserver, however! Get the free MiniSFTP server from Core, install it on your Windows box, and then install sshfs or Wizard Mounter on your N800, and you can access the files from anywhere you can get Internet.