Mount samba shares with utf8 encoding using cifs

[bayvista]

Tried that but still no joy. I can ping HP-Laptop and the IP address OK. I'm sure it's a Vista problem. I'll make do with the manual mount for now until I get some more time to work on it.

Thanks

[rkillcrazy]

try unmounting the share:

sudo umount /media/sharename

and then change the permissions on the local folder to make sure it is read/writable like so:

sudo chmod 777 /media/sharename

then remount, or reboot and see if that corrects your issue.

Well, I tried using fstab to mount it in lieu of a sudo command and still no joy. Once again, it mounted just fine and I could create, move, cut, copy, et cetera but could NOT delete the any files. What's funny (not haha funny either ) is my "work around" is to cut/paste to desktop and then delete from the desktop.

What shall we try next?

Side note.....AKA - rant
You know - there should be a GUI for this sort of thing. I understand the command line should work fine but this should be as simple as mapping a drive in Windows. A little GUI should easily be able to ask you what to mount and if you want it mounted on startup all the time. Hell, even throw a permissions thing in there so you can choose who can do what with it. I'm a Windows Admin (yep, that's my job) and I map drives all the time. I even set NTFS and SHARING permissions for users & groups. If Ubuntu wants to compete with some big guy like Bill Gates, it will have to be able to complete little things like this without having over 30-some pages in a forum. Don't get me wrong - I may be a Windows Admin by day but by night I'm playing around with Ubuntu. I don't even use Windows at home! It's just hard to convert people over to something like this when something so petty as mapping a drive is so damn difficult. There have been several things like this where I thought to myself, "there has to be a better way..." Geeks like us will carry on and try to work around and fix things but the average guy, buying a Dell that's loaded with Ubuntu, won't. He'll get pissy and load some busted/hacked version of Windows on it and never turn his back on Bill Gates again. He'll chalk his Ubuntu experience up as a learning experience that he'll wish to never revisit. Which sucks 'cause you save electricity when you use Ubuntu in lieu of Vista. Vista constantly catalogs the drive or something....I've never been so worried about burning out an HDD activity LED in my life! I just hope 8.04 addresses a lot of this since they are advertising fewer config files and such.

OK, rant is done I'll keep playing with this stuff and hope you other folks have better luck than I.

02-02-08
2350 EST

[dmizer]

rkillcrazy, have you by any chance enabled a root user on your ubuntu system?

i understand your frustration. seriously, i was there and i still am there quite often. and point in fact, there are gui alternatives to what i'm showing here: samba gui list. in this thread, i've used cli commands because i KNOW that the directions will be the same even if you use kde, gnome, xfce, icewm, fluxbox, or a server with cli only access. in fact, the directions are even primarily the same if you use ubuntu, fedora, gentoo, opensuse, or a multitude of other distros. to me, universiality is what gives the commandline its power.

what's more, i don't know many "average" users who want to share files across a network or even know what a network is. this does not meant that there "shouldn't be an easier way", just that when considering the needs and desires of an "average" user, you can't think from the POV of a windows network admin.

that said, you're right. it SHOULD be easier. but windows is not easy either. it creates just as many frustrations and annoyances. it's probably easier for you to handle them because you've been using windows for so much longer. in my opinion, linux is not better than windows, it's just different. some aspects of linux are better than windows, and some aspects of windows are better than linux. my reasoning for using linux is that the advantages it offers over windows are advantages which suit my needs.

[rkillcrazy]

rkillcrazy, have you by any chance enabled a root user on your ubuntu system?

i understand your frustration. seriously, i was there and i still am there quite often. and point in fact, there are gui alternatives to what i'm showing here: samba gui list. in this thread, i've used cli commands because i KNOW that the directions will be the same even if you use kde, gnome, xfce, icewm, fluxbox, or a server with cli only access. in fact, the directions are even primarily the same if you use ubuntu, fedora, gentoo, opensuse, or a multitude of other distros. to me, universiality is what gives the commandline its power.

what's more, i don't know many "average" users who want to share files across a network or even know what a network is. this does not meant that there "shouldn't be an easier way", just that when considering the needs and desires of an "average" user, you can't think from the POV of a windows network admin.

that said, you're right. it SHOULD be easier. but windows is not easy either. it creates just as many frustrations and annoyances. it's probably easier for you to handle them because you've been using windows for so much longer. in my opinion, linux is not better than windows, it's just different. some aspects of linux are better than windows, and some aspects of windows are better than linux. my reasoning for using linux is that the advantages it offers over windows are advantages which suit my needs.

No, as far as I know I've not enabled any root users.

Yeah, I'm with ya....I've gotten tired of Windows when it pisses me off and that's why I have an Ubuntu box @ home. Now, about those average users wanting to share files... They are becoming more prevalent. In fact, Microsoft is releasing (or has already done so) a Windows Home Server OS. You and I are probably thinking the same thing - "Why would any average home user have a need for a server OS?" If MS sees a market for it, there must be a boat load of average users out there who wish to have a home file server to share files with. It seems pretty need as you can keep adding HDDs to it and it will replicate across all of them for redundancy. My best guess for the reasoning is that today's homes have more than one computer. It seem like everyone has a craptop these days. I guess people want to keep music and other media in a central location so all the PCs in the house can get to it. As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much what we are all reading this for - we wish to share files easily.

Although my point of view may have seemed bias, it wasn't. I've always been pretty good about stepping up for the average user. I know I could script all kinds of stuff and have the users use this, that or the other but in the end, it would only be easy for me. They need simple point-n-click or they will get too frustrated and give up on the idea. I think Linux, in many ways, is better than Windows. However, where Linux excels in security and stability, it falls short in many of little things an average user can do in Windows. Because of this, I have a hard time selling my clients on Ubuntu. Haha I do keep throwing it in their face via a dual boot setup though! They can't boot up without seeing an option for Ubuntu... And that has gotten myself and the client out a jam when they broke Windows with spyware. It's still frustrating to see all those sheep in Bill Gates' pen and I swear I could get more of them to see the better/safer/more stable side of computing if I could just get more of them to use Linux.

[dmizer]

well, shortly before my encounter with ubuntu about 2 years ago, i did my own first windows to windows (winxp to win2000) file sharing network. it took me about a month of frustrating, hair pulling google searches, lots of late hours, and a swear can full of quarters. and at that time, i would have considered myself an above average windows user. i found it less difficult to do the same in linux but that was because i'd already learned the basics.

anyway, it really doesn't address your issue, which seems to have become a common theme in the most recent posts here. i'm really at a loss as to what is going on, as everything works perfect under my setup. you aren't by chance connecting to a windows share where either ubuntu or windows is runing in a virtual machine?

i'd actually love to get some hands on time with one of these machines and see if i can figure out what the heck the problem is.

[SonicSteve]

Although my point of view may have seemed bias, it wasn't. I've always been pretty good about stepping up for the average user. I know I could script all kinds of stuff and have the users use this, that or the other but in the end, it would only be easy for me. They need simple point-n-click or they will get too frustrated and give up on the idea. I think Linux, in many ways, is better than Windows. However, where Linux excels in security and stability, it falls short in many of little things an average user can do in Windows. Because of this, I have a hard time selling my clients on Ubuntu. Haha I do keep throwing it in their face via a dual boot setup though! They can't boot up without seeing an option for Ubuntu... And that has gotten myself and the client out a jam when they broke Windows with spyware. It's still frustrating to see all those sheep in Bill Gates' pen and I swear I could get more of them to see the better/safer/more stable side of computing if I could just get more of them to use Linux.

Careful about doing this, it could just annoy them and turn them off completely. Also I find that although we know that Linux is great and I agree better than windows, Most windows users need to be at the end of their rope before they will consider Linux. Some just can't because of Windows only apps and others are simply afraid.

I bet if you read through this thread you'll find some posts from me in here. I went through similar things setting up between Windows XP and Ubuntu. Though I just couldn't get read/write access. Once I had read/write I could delete files. Your experience is just strange, sorry, but it is.
PS I come from the exact same background as you. Windows network admin by day and full time on -all computers now- Ubuntu at home.

[wildegnux]

First of all, great how-to! Thanks a lot, it helped.

I am however missing one thing and that is how do I mount a samba share with read/write access for a single user and no/limited access for other users?

[dmizer]

wildegnux, i don't know if this will work or not, but it's worth a shot. i've never had do do this kind of mount on a multiple user system.

//netbiosname/sharename    /media/sharename        cifs    credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,uid=ALLOWED-USER,gid=ALLOWED-USER,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

where "ALLOWED-USER" is the ubuntu user id you wish to allow access to the share.

[MrNiceguy]

Not sure if you can help me, and sorry if this has been asked and answered already in the thread. (I did use the "Search in this thread" function, but haven't read all 37 pages.)

Your guide worked great - I now have the SMB share on my NAS box mapped to /media/music, and AmaroK can see my entire music collection.

Here's the weird thing. The automatically-created shortcuts on the desktop and under the "Storage Media" section don't work. If I try to open either one, I get a "Permissions Denied" error message. If I actually browse to /media/music, everything works fine.

Any ideas? I can live with it, but it's kinda annoying.

[dmizer]

Not sure if you can help me, and sorry if this has been asked and answered already in the thread. (I did use the "Search in this thread" function, but haven't read all 37 pages.)

Your guide worked great - I now have the SMB share on my NAS box mapped to /media/music, and AmaroK can see my entire music collection.

Here's the weird thing. The automatically-created shortcuts on the desktop and under the "Storage Media" section don't work. If I try to open either one, I get a "Permissions Denied" error message. If I actually browse to /media/music, everything works fine.

Any ideas? I can live with it, but it's kinda annoying.

well, that's a first. i actually have no knowledge of the automatic shortcut creations. i assume they are based in nautilus, so that's where i would start my troubleshooting. also, obviously permissions are amiss somewhere.

you could try unmounting the share:

sudo umount /media/music

then change the permissions of your mounted folder to world read/write:

sudo chmod 777 /media/music

then remount the share:

sudo mount /media/music

and see if that corrects your problem. if not, then i'll do some digging on the link creations.