Run LibreElec as file server while not using Kodi

I had my home server set up with Windows Server 2008 but the boot drive started failing, so I got an SSD and decided to try debian. I got it working through a lot of pain to serve up files to my HTPC. I got a new TV and decided to put the old one in the bedroom hooked directly to the server for some occasional late night watching once it gets cold, so I put Kodi on it and it broke my samba shares. Frustrated, I clean wiped and installed LibreElec, which works great. All the external drives were shared without any additional configuration and easily added to my HTPC via samba and Kodi works fine on the server too, so great.

My question is, is it possible to run LibreElec as a file server without running Kodi when I don't need it and be able to easily start Kodi when I do? I don't like it cranking away in the background. When looking at it on SSH, it was using cpu which I'd like to sit idle if I'm just serving up files. If I can't do that, what's the easiest Linux distro to work with for running Kodi and setting up samba shares without hours of headaches that I had on debian?

Quote from polo_joe

Code

systemctl stop kodi

stops kodi, samba shares are still available

Code

systemctl start kodi

to start kodi again

Thanks, do I just send this through ssh whenever I want to start and stop it?

Quote from Klojum

You can thank Microsoft for that. On the other hand, SMB was not broken, only v1 was disabled by default in Kodi/LibreELEC. You can still enable v1, but no one wants to run a security-problematic network. You can also run Raspbian and properly configure the Samba server, or use NFS server instead. There is also Ubuntu Mate for 16.04 for the Raspberry Pi, also capable of running SMB and NFS servers.

Samba works fine with LibreElec. It was installing Kodi on debian that broke my samba shares.

Oh, and I tried NFS on debian. I got it working, but it always had problems. Samba just plays nicer with Windows and my HTPC will always be windows since I use madvr on it.