Multipurpose RaspberryPi 2 B Server

[WickedForte]

I couldn't decide what topic this would best be created under, so I posted it here.

I'm somewhat of beginner level Linux user. I have been in the implementation stage of a multipurpose Raspberry Server. This project may be lofty for what the Raspberry Pi 2 B model may be capable of. This project I understand may not get the best performance speeds but I expect that. I just want to make this project as efficient as possible.

First off, let me explain what I plan for this server so hopefully the community may help me figure out the best way of tackling this project.
I want this machine to run as Plex Media Server, File server for myself, friends, and family for that purpose I have elected to use owncloud with possible ftp accessibility with varying permissions for individual friends/family accounts, and a torrent seed box (Deluge based) accepting torrents via webgui. I have a large amount of mountable file space that is giving me the most headache,

This server will be interacting with windows machines mostly (my desktop and laptop) and web gui.

The perplexing thing for me is that I want to have all my drives setup under ext4 to take advantage of everything I want the Pi2 to do but I have no experience with Samba. I'll be the only person interfacing with Samba on my server. So far to my understanding if I want to use samba with my Windows computer I need a drive formatted with NTFS, I don't want to do this, because I want the pi2 to not stress its processor when it may be streaming a 1080p movie to my WiiU via Plex Media Server. (I have the PMS implemented, it works flawlessly ATM but I fear when this setup is fully finished it may suffer.)

Can you use an EXT4 drive with samba with Windows without those ext fs viewer programs? The only real purpose samba interfacing with my window machines is just so I can access my Music, and can stash away my other files with filezilla via SFTP.
I could partition a drive for solely NTFS but that's not ideal, the thing that scares me with ext-fs viewers I could get corrupted data or the like of ease of access.

While I am posting the only thing I'm unclear on how to setup multiple users for specific FTP accounts for my friends/family for specific folders. I would only implement with OwnCloud but my users may be uploading a lot of content at once, where it would be easier to use ftp but alot of the users would find OwnCloud alot easier to use.

My users are aware they may get slow uploads/downloads from my server due to me streaming possibly using a QoS on certain ports. With torrents being the lowest priority and streaming(Plex) being the highest.

[myoung008]

There is no reason to use NTFS as the underlying file system for Samba. It works fine with most major Linux file systems.

Samba likes acl and xattr enabled on the file system for some functionality. Permissions management across the Windows-Linux divide is a little weird but works. Also, Windows filenames are not case sensitive and Linux filenames are, but samba has some functionality to help with that as well.

Hope this helps.

[WickedForte]

Thanks for the info! I'll have to give it whack when I'm home on my windows machine to mount it as a network samba path. I just worried because every guide demonstrates using the NTFS plug-in for in their mounts/fstabs. Didn't know if I was missing something.

[kusti8]

Thanks for the info! I'll have to give it whack when I'm home on my windows machine to mount it as a network samba path. I just worried because every guide demonstrates using the NTFS plug-in for in their mounts/fstabs. Didn't know if I was missing something.

ext is even easier to mount. The ntfs driver is clunky and really slow. Samba will convert the permissions and file system for her on Windows.

[rpdom]

The only good reason to use NTFS on your Samba partitions is if you need to unplug the drives from the Pi and plug them into a Windows system directly.

Windows understands SMBFS and CIFS (essentially the same thing) and that's what it sees with Samba running on the server - no matter what the real file system is.