Home Network with Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7

[walt11]

In essence, it is a reasonable way to go. All you have to do is to:

Thank you! I really needed the cookbook approach, and I appreciate it. Setting up the share from the Ubuntu side worked perfectly as per your guide, and I was able to transfer a file from my Ubuntu PC

I followed your instructions for configuring the win7 machine, and that appeared to go well. But on the Ubuntu machine, when I open Network, here's what I see:

An icon for my printer
An icon for the Ubuntu machine (called EMACHINES-T6520)
An icon for the laptop (called WALT-NOTEBOOK) If I try to open this I get:

"Unable to mount location- Failed to retrieve share list from server"

BUT, there is a 4th icon called "Windows Network"
When I open it, I get another icon, named WORKGROUP.
And, when I dbl-click that, I again get the first 3 icons that I described above. And when I try to open WALT-NOTEBOOK I get the same error message as above. I've tried this several times, and once I got a different error message:

"Could not display 'smb://walt-notebook'- Error: Failed to retrieve share list from server. Please select another viewer and try again."

What do I need to do to make it work?

[Morbius1]

It looks like a netbios name - to - ip address conversion problem to me. You can verify that by changing your access method from this:

nautilus smb://walt-notebook

To this:

nautilus smb://192.168.0.100

Where 192.168.0.100 is the ip address of "walt-notebook"

If it works by ip address then edit smb.conf as root:

gksu gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

And add a line to the [global] section - right under the workgroup line is where I'd put it:

name resolve order = bcast host lmhosts wins

bcast is the only method that woks by default, it's listed last by default, and sometimes "wins" gets in the way which is why I put it last.

Then restart samba:

sudo service nmbd restart
sudo service smbd restart

Wait a few minutes for the network to settle down and then try to access the shares.

[walt11]

It looks like a netbios name - to - ip address conversion problem to me. You can verify that by changing your access method

Thanks for the detailed information. I tried changing the access method, using the ip address supplied by Windows, but got the same error message I reported earlier: "Could not display 'smb://my ip address'- Error: Failed to retrieve share list from server. Please select another viewer and try again."

It may be worth mentioning that I've only received this type of error message once before. All the other times, it's simply "Unable to mount location- Failed to retrieve share list from server"

And this also may be significant. Today when I open Network, I'm only getting the icon for "Windows Network" and not the other 3 I was getting yesterday. When I open Windows Network I get WORKGROUP. However, when I dbl-click on that I get the error message directly: "Unable to mount location- Failed to retrieve share list from server", and not the other 3 icons again as before.

[Morbius1]

A "could not display" almost sounds like you have some packages missing:

sudo apt-get install gvfs-backends
sudo apt-get install gvfs-fuse

And it's also possible that you aren't a member of the fuse group:

sudo gpasswd -a your-user-name fuse

[walt11]

A "could not display" almost sounds like you have some packages missing:

sudo apt-get install gvfs-backends
sudo apt-get install gvfs-fuse

And it's also possible that you aren't a member of the fuse group:

sudo gpasswd -a your-user-name fuse

I found that both gvs-backends and gvs-fuse were already installed, but I did execute the gpasswd command, and rebooted. The windows I'm getting now correspond to the note at the end of jonandrews' guide (and that I was getting last night, but not earlier today) but at the final click, I still get the error message. Here's how it looks:

Network window shows the Ubuntu machine, my notebook, and the "Windows Network" entry. I open "Windows Network".

Windows Network shows the one entry WORKGROUP.

WORKGROUP shows printer, Ubuntu machine, and laptop (WALT-NOTEBOOK)

But when I try to open WALT-NOTEBOOK I still get

Unable to mount location
Failed to retrieve share list from server

As you can see, I understand very little of the workings of this, but could there be a problem on the Windows side? Maybe there is something I failed to set up, which is causing the server there to malfunction. How can I check that out?

[Morbius1]

** Disable whatever firewall you have set up on the Windows machine and try to access it again.

** If that still doesn’t get you anywhere then run the following diagnostic command:

smbtree

If you get a listing of all your Linux shares but only a listing of the Windows host name without it's shares then run smbtree this way:

smbtree -U morbius

Where morbius is a username on the Windows box. When smbtree asks for a password enter the Window's user's password.

If you now get a listing of the WIndows shares without any errors being reported run the following command:

 nautilus smb://morbius@walt-notebook

OR

 nautilus smb://morbius@192.168.0.100

[walt11]

If you now get a listing of the WIndows shares without any errors being reported run the following command:

 nautilus smb://morbius@walt-notebook

OR

 nautilus smb://morbius@192.168.0.100

Success!

I didn't get the listing, but decided to try the commands, and the one with the ip address worked! In fact, it worked without the username@ preface - which is what you suggested in your first post. It didn't work then (but I've since been added to the fuse group per your instructions).

In any case, I added the line you provided to smb.conf, and it now works from the Network window.

Thank you for sticking with me, and for all your good help. Many thanks also to jonandrews without whose instructions for configuring win7, and his guide, I would not even have got off the ground. Thanks also to the others who responded.

I was thinking of marking this solved, but first I want to change the computer names, and that will make some waves. I may also now try to include my XP machine - maybe.

[jonandrews]

I'm glad you've got it sorted out, walt11. I have also experienced the 'Unable to mount etc' error on occasion, and have always had to resort to rebooting all the machines on the network to resolve it. I will also be trying out the solution from Morbius1, so thanks for that.

[jonandrews]

To Dave_in_MD: If I understand your last post correctly, my thoughts are as follows
1 - From the Ubuntu pc, by default you are able to see and access shared windows folders. The password request you are getting is from windows, and you need to enter your windows user name & password. If you don't have a windows password, then the password is [leave it blank].

2 - If you have done nothing on the Ubuntu pc to set up sharing, then it it quite right that you will not be able to see it from a windows pc. To set up sharing, follow my guide on http://www.europe.eclipse.co.uk/Ubuntu/.

I hope I have understood your situation correctly.

[welshlion]

Reading through this thread,I noticed that there was a suggestion that "media streaming" should be "off" in the network set up on Windows 7. I discovered that networking would only work if it is turned "on".
Hope this helps...