How to fix Dapper's broken SAMBA ??

[celem]

I used to be able to access Windows XP shares and the Windows XP box could access the Dapper shares, but after Dapper daily updates last week Samba has become totally broke.

When I try to access the Dapper shares via “Start->My Network Places”, the Dapper shares do not display.

When I try to access the Dapper shares via “Start->My Network Places->View Workgroup Computers”, the Dapper machine icon displays, but when I click on it, it fails with a “The network path was not found” error dialog box.

When I try to access the Windows shares from Dapper via Places-Network Servers, the Windows Network icon is displayed but when I click on the icon, the dialog box window clears to a blank and the shares do not display.

/etc/smb.conf is generic original except that I have added a share at the bottom (via the GUI). The workgroup is the same name as the XP box, “MSHOME”; security-user; netbios = alvin.

Remember – all of this worked correctly prior to last week’s Dapper daily updates.

Because some people have indicated that they are successfully using Samba with Dapper I have attempted another try at fixing it.

1. Using Synaptic I totally removed, including configuration files, ALL packages dealing with Samba. The packages removed were: samba, samba-common, libsmbclient, smbclient, smbfs, libgnomevfs2-extra

2. I rebooted Dapper and verified that /etc/rc?.d/*sambs, /etc/initd/samba, /etc/samba/* were all gone.

3. Using Synaptic I added only samba and samba-common and repeated attempts to access Windows shares and visa-versa. The results of accessing Dapper shares from Windows had the same “The network path was not found” error. Accessing Windows shares from Dapper resulted in a "smb:/// is not a valid location." Error. This error is why I originally added libgnomevfs2-extra.

4. I tested printing to the Windows XP shared printer and it, once again, wasn’t working. So, I next used Synaptic to add back libsmbclient, smbclient, smbfs and libgnomevfs2-extra. Then I rebooted Dapper.

5. Now the Windows XP shared printer works but access shares to/from is back to the original problem – Windows reports “The network path was not found” and Dapper shows a blank dialog box when I click the “Windows Network” icon at Places-Network Servers.

Can anyone think of anything else to try? This is driving me nuts.

[celem]

Update: Still broken as described yet if I use Firefox to access "smb://192.168.0.102/", I see the Windows shares in the browser. Any clue as to what is broken in the normal packages??

[goodmaj]

Make sure that /etc/samba/smb.conf reads as follows:

# You may wish to use password encryption. See the section on
# 'encrypt passwords' in the smb.conf(5) manpage before enabling.
encrypt passwords = true

I got the same error message with Samba shares on Mac OS X 10.4 until I made the above change in the conf file. (encrypt passwords = true)

After changing the conf file you must restart samba to make the change effective.

I hope this helps.

[celem]

"encrypt passwords = true" is set because that is the default in smb.conf. I suspect that whatever in the daily Dapper updates broke Samba wasn't in a Samba package, as I have replaced those several times, but instead, must be another package that interacts with Samba.

[celem]

To re-phrase and clarify the problem, I feel that it isn’t a Samba problem, but rather a nautilus problem, or combination thereof, in that the Samba info isn’t being displayed. Since the Windows shares can be viewed via Firefox with "smb://192.168.0.102/", yet only a blank screen results from looking for the shares via nautilus’s “Places->Network Servers”.

[Fedcer]

Originally Posted by celem To re-phrase and clarify the problem, I feel that it isn’t a Samba problem, but rather a nautilus problem, or combination thereof, in that the Samba info isn’t being displayed.

I don't think that it's a nautilus problem because I'm using Kubuntu Dapper and I'm having exactly your same problem. After one of dapper's updates samba stopped working and when I try to access a computer in the newtork I get the error "The network path was not found" (while before with the same config it had been working perfectly).

[celem]

I am concerned that this will not be fixed since other Dapper users report no problems with Samba. I don't know what would be unique to mine and your loads yet not in other people's Dapper loads. I upgraded to Dapper Beta weeks ago from Breezy 5.10. Originally I had problems printing to my Windows Printer but this Samba problem was fixed. Subsequent to that fix all aspects of Samba worked bidirectionaly to/from Windows. Then, last week's upgrades broke something - I don't know what. I am concerned that my last resort will be to do a clean install with Dapper's final release but I hesitate in doing that because I don't want to lose everything that I've configured, such as qemu and wine.

[jalonsom]

I experience a similar problem since a long time ago.
I think it is a problem with resolving server names:

In nautilus, press ctrl-l to show the address when you have tried to browse the server and it has failed. It shows "smb;//servername". Nautilus is trying to find the server by its name.

Replace the server name with its IP and it should work ok.

That's why I guess it is a name resolving problem. What I don't know is if it's a bug or a misconfiguration of samba... Probably a bug as it does not work for me out of the box, with the default config...
It happens to me when browsing both WinXP and Dapper machines.

Gonna take a look at launchpad to see if there is something similar.

[pauljwells]

If you have your networkset up using dhcp it might just be that your router has the wrong names against IP addresses in its leases table. I find that most SAMBA funnies get magically fixed with a router reboot.

[celem]

Except, (see my problem description above) it worked prior to last week's Dapper Daily Updates. Nothing else changed in my Windows XP box, router, network, etc. Even the Dapper box had no changes other than the Daily Updates. Therefore, logically speaking, the problem must be within changes made in Dapper by the updates.