Access Samba shares from Windows 8?

[squakie]

** PLEASE NOTE: I'VE MARKED THIS AS SOLVED BUT THERE IS NO SOLUTION HERE - I'VE JUST GIVEN UP ON THE ENTIRE THING **



I seem to be having a problem I don't understand. I have xubuntu running on an old laptop. I loaded Samba and configured my workgroup name, turned on user security and added a share.

On the xubuntu laptop I can see the network, see the workgroup, see the server and log into the share. Right now I don't have ufw enabled, but assume I should. I don't know how to set it up to allow Samba shares (ports??).

On my good laptop I have Windows 8 with ZoneAlarm installed and running Trend Micro antivirus. If I open file manager and click on network, sometimes the server shows, sometimes it doesn't. Clicking on it always results in the same message - it can't find the network path.

On Windows 8 I tried the registry addition of the lanman "level" as per Windows 7 - but Windows 8 doesn't have both control001 and control002 as per Windows 7. Still can't get to the server.

Besides the old crappy laptop running xubuntu and Samba, there are 3 other laptops here - Windows XP Pro, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Mine is the Windows 8 one. I want to be able to run backups by user to their share in Samba, and also set up shares for common pictures, etc.. I thought xubuntu running Samba was the way I was supposed to accomplish this.

Has ANYONE been able to see Linux Samba shares from Windows 8?? I've left the sb.conf pretty much default. I don't know a thing about making Samba the master browser, domain controller, etc., and was hoping I wouldn't have to learn that part of things. Firewall settings? Something in the Samba server conf file?

ANY help would be greatly appreciated!!

[squakie]

Bump. The only thing I have even seen mentioned is turning off user lever security in Samba and letting all shares be seen and available to all Samba users, including guest. I haven't tried it since right now I am trying to load XP on the old laptop to see if all these different versions of Windows can do simple sharing or not. If so, that buys me just as much as trying to get Samba user-level security working with Windows 8. I'd really like to keep this all Linux based if possible.

[squakie]

I found another older post on the internet for this. It has a registry update for Windows 8 so that it can access Samba shares, but it also seems to require that the computers in question all be part of a domain. In addition, I found another thread that suggested the Samba box should be made the domain server to avoid excess net traffic from computers trying to discover the domain server. With enough playing around, I'm sure I could manage that, but I'm afraid I've been away from these things long enough that I have what may be the dumbest question in the world:

I am not a business running my own domains. I'm just a guy who has cable, which feeds the cable router/phone adapter/tv adapter/wireless box. All of the PC's here connect to the internet via the wireless connection. DNS is via the net. So how could I set up a domain that is local to the wireless side and still let the computers use the internet and DNS there? 2 of these laptops are also taken "on the road" and used at other private and public wireless access points to access the internet. I'm quite confused here (I bet THAT didn't show, eh? ) and really need some help trying to understand how this would work before I just go setting up the Samba box to also be a domain server.

[redmk2]

I found another older post on the internet for this. It has a registry update for Windows 8 so that it can access Samba shares, but it also seems to require that the computers in question all be part of a domain. In addition, I found another thread that suggested the Samba box should be made the domain server to avoid excess net traffic from computers trying to discover the domain server. With enough playing around, I'm sure I could manage that, but I'm afraid I've been away from these things long enough that I have what may be the dumbest question in the world:

I am not a business running my own domains. I'm just a guy who has cable, which feeds the cable router/phone adapter/tv adapter/wireless box. All of the PC's here connect to the internet via the wireless connection. DNS is via the net. So how could I set up a domain that is local to the wireless side and still let the computers use the internet and DNS there? 2 of these laptops are also taken "on the road" and used at other private and public wireless access points to access the internet. I'm quite confused here (I bet THAT didn't show, eh? ) and really need some help trying to understand how this would work before I just go setting up the Samba box to also be a domain server.

I think it's important to define what you mean by "domain". For the most part a "domain server" is a centralized server that holds the centralized login accounts and security settings for a particular "domain". It is a security thing. Samba can do that but it is not absolutely needed. It has nothing really to do with file sharing per se. It is important to the conversation to know what version of Samba are you using. I use Samba 3.6 for all my file shares. I do not administer my 6 hosts centrally at all. This is typically thought of as a workgroup situation, but it's all semantics as you don't even need to be in the same workgroup for it all to work. There are so many variations to both domain PDC (NT style) or DC (AD (LDAP) style) or workgroup (Ad Hoc) that it is best to decide first what it is you are attempting to do. I believe you would just need a workgroup situation.

If you want all of this to work correctly you need to have the basic networking connectivity pieces working first. The basic Samba install using Ubuntu debs (Synaptic or some such) expects that you have done this. To me this means you need to configure your local network name resolution (LAN side DNS) . This is specific only to your LAN. The Internet DNS is not part of this configuration. You could think of this as your domain. I have all of my desktop/server hosts configured with a static IP address (via /etc/network/interfaces). My laptops have a consistent IP address (unchanging) too. Once the IP addresses are consistent, you can set the hostnames via the /etc/hosts file. When resolving DNS the hosts will first check the hosts file first before consulting a DNS server. This is also how Windows and Apple OSX work also.

Why is this important? Because Samba by default, checks the hosts file as part of this DNS local lookup and if successful, the hostname is converted to a NETBIOS name that Samba can use. With out this you have to resort to a non-default configuration. It's okay to do that, but if you don't understand you might not get it all correct and then be frustrated with inconsistent results. I believe that all the configuration and registry hacks are unnecessary for successful local single segment LAN operation of Samba 3.6.

I would start with a simple default smb.conf file and correctly setup IP networking and build out from there. One server and a single Windows host. Then use debugging (-d3 or so) to pinpoint what, if any, problems you are experiencing. As it stands now it appears you have too may variables to contend with (yes I have read your other posts).

In short Samba should be able to share files in a simple home LAN without too much fuss. The correctly configured TCP/IP infrastructure is very important to successful operation of Samba. I have used the same setup from Win2000 to Windows7 and never had to resort to any modification of the Windows clients registry at all. It's helpful to understand that Samba 3.6 has 3 aspects of operation -- PDC (NT style Domains) -- File sharing (mapping a drive) and Network Browsing. I don't see that you need the first and you may not need the last either, but it will make Samba more enjoyable.
To start with, are you using Samba 3.6 or Samba4 ?

[squakie]

I'm not at the system at this moment, but I believe it's 3.6 - I seem to remember samba4 being mentioned in synaptic as still experimental and not to use it for a production environment. Since I think backups fall into the production environment are, I stuck with what I believe is samba 3.6.

You are very correct in my wanting to keep this as simple as possible. All I really want to do:

- all three laptops should have their own unique shares that the other PC's can't see
- all three laptops should be able to access 1 or more common shares (say for pictures, common documents, etc.) where things are in a single place. I started with just a workgroup XXXX just to test, and I turned deleted the text that was in that other choice (I can't find the thing right now, but it had a name instead of being in a workgroup). I just simply want to be able to assign a logical drive in Windows to the corresponding Samba share
- I just want the 3 flavors of Windows to be able to access the shares (Win XP Pro, Win 7 and Win 8)
- I'd like to keep all the shares on the external usb drive (perhaps more than 1). I think as far as sharing the drives it should be a non-issue
- I would like to start with a single laptop - my Windows 8 one - and get it all working with Samba
- in that regard, I'd like the xubuntu old laptop with Samba to have a fixed IP address (I tried this but it was late at night and I obviously didn't follow the instructions ). My understanding is that all of that goes in the interfaces.conf (sp?) file. The 3 laptops that I want to be able to use the Samba shares I would like to keep at dynamic addresses if possible - I don't know if that's a practical idea or not - I just thought it would minimize changes to each laptop.
- I don't have a clue anymore on what, if anything, I need to change in /etc/hosts
- I'm also not sure about what you mean by the TCP/IP infrastructure - everything is IPv4. On the Windows 8 laptop I do have the file and printer sharing enabled in the tcp/ip configuration. Beyond that I don't understand enough anymore to know what the heck to do - I hope you don't mind that and would be willing to work with me.

If you don't mind helping me, perhaps when this is all done and working we can collaborate (or maybe you'd just like to do it since you know this stuff ) on a simple how-to for this simple type of sharing.

Thank you so much for your response and help. As I'm sure is obvious, I am more than a little lost, and I think the things I've seen on the net for Windows 8 being able to access Samba shares is just confusing things.

I'm going to start by completely reloading xubuntu and then samba on the old laptop and take the default Samba config and see what happens. I'll also assign am IP address to it.

Thank you so very much again! I think what I want to do is really simple and doesn't require the other things I have found - and I don't understand any of that anyway!

[squakie]

Here's another dumb question - I really hope you don't mind. Without Samba installed, is there something I can do to be sure that the networking parts themselves are working - like seeing the xubuntu machine from the Windows 8 laptop and vice versa? Maybe there's something I'm missing at a very basic level there as well. I just thought I had to have Samba so I could have a workgroup name so I could match it to Windows and be able to see each other.

[redmk2]

Here's another dumb question - I really hope you don't mind. Without Samba installed, is there something I can do to be sure that the networking parts themselves are working - like seeing the xubuntu machine from the Windows 8 laptop and vice versa? Maybe there's something I'm missing at a very basic level there as well. I just thought I had to have Samba so I could have a workgroup name so I could match it to Windows and be able to see each other.

With your default install of Xubuntu we can start by confirming that it uses the proper hostname.

I like to use the CLI fo all my configuration, so we will use that. Open a terminal and use this command

hostname

...what do you get?

What is returned when you use this command

cat /etc/hosts

Can you explain basically how you setup your TCP/IP networking on this host? I'm curious and I have never used Xubuntu. I have a really old Pentium 3 Dell that I use as a Samba server to do backups with. It is Ubuntu server 12.04 with no GUI at all. Do you intend on using this Xubuntu host for anything other than the Samba server?

[squakie]

As far as I know, xubuntu is just ubuntu but with the xfce desktop manager instead of unity - it makes it lighter. So, the installation automatically set up networking. By default, it adds the name of the user being set up to the front of what it finds for the computer "description", which usually ends up being a long string. I didn't take the default and instead entered "dwesamba". So, the outputs you wanted are as follows:

dwesamba@dwesamba:~$ hostname
dwesamba
dwesamba@dwesamba:~$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1    localhost
127.0.1.1    dwesamba

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
dwesamba@dwesamba:~$

I only plan on using this old laptop just for Samba, so perhaps I would be better off with just the server edition?

I did follow a couple of threads in the forum for setting up a static IP address - tried it first via network manager/edit, but all I got was a network that I couldn't do anything with on the net. Pings to a name came back as unable to resolve the name. I had looked at the network information (it's wireless) prior to the editing, so everything go entered the same except for the IP address - I changed it to 10.0.0.250 (I have a printer at 252, and there's another printer - my brother in-laws' - that's wireless also but he installed it when I wasn't home so I don't know what it assigned for IP - I think 10.0.0.50). Btw, my net is showing at 10.x.x.x since the cable box/telephone adapter/net access point has a built-in router (only a few ports) so it grabs the higher IP so I get it's subnet for the wireless.

I tried doing what was in another thread, with instructions from chili555, to set a static IP address in 12.04 (i'm at 12.10) but that also resulted not only in a network that wouldn't work - the system wouldn't boot up all the way - got stuck on waiting for network configuration and then it completely hung. Tried the old power button off, then power back on and let it boot, but with the same result. This was both trying network manager and also by just making changes to /etc/network/interfaces. That last one caused a lock up - perhaps I was supposed to shut-down or remove nm before putting the changes in interfaces.

So, I reinstalled xubuntu 12.10 from scratch again, did the updates again, then let it do the upgrade to 13.04. Things didn't work any better and I couldn't get my network back. So....I reinstalled xubuntu 12.10 again and did the updates. Now I'm just using the default auto-configuration for wlan0 instead of specifying anything so I at least have an internet connection again! But alas - no static IP address!

It's a completely green install right now - I've done nothing with it. If you think I'd be better off just installing the server version just let me know. I was just leary of it because I didn't know what any of the defaults were - like does it automatically enabled http, php, etc., access, when all I want is Samba. If just the server version I won't need to use xubuntu - I just did that since t doesn't use unity and therefore actually runs on this old laptop. And I'm not afraid of the command line. Although.....in the mess I got into I tried going in via root terminal recovery mode only to find the only editor that I knew of that it would run was vi - and I hadn't used vi since 1993 so any knowledge I had on that is gone! I also don't remember how to start the dhclient from the command line but I'm sure I could figure that out. I think I'll go ahead and download the server version and burn a disc so I'm ready in case you think I should just go that way.

EDIT: btw, when I've tried to set a static ip via network manager, in the ipv4 settings I had to change it to manual so I could specify anything. After stopping and restarting networking, it would connect, and it showed the same under information as it did when I used just the whatever it defaults to - the only differences were "manual" instead of "automatic" and the IP address - "10.0.0.250" versus "10.0.0.7" <- what it seems it's always getting assigned anyway.

[squakie]

Well, an update. I downloaded Ubuntu server 12.04 32-bit and installed it, selecting only samba and my wireless as the network. When it booted my network let me ping www.yahoo.com. Hosts shows "Ubuntu" now instead of "samba", as I just took the default. With that in mind, the hosts file now also show "Ubuntu" instead of "samba".

I tried following this I tried to temporarily give wlan0 a static IP address via:

sudo ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0


An ifconfig then showed the IP address I specified and the mask I specified. I tried to ping www.yahoo.com again, and it failed with hostname not found. I thought this must be a DNS error, yet /etc/resolv.conf shows the correct IP address for the dns servers and a line for Comcast's things. So, just changing the IP address seems to stop me from being able to use DNS. Perhaps this is a router issue, and to be honest I don't want to mess with the router set up as the last time I did my brother inlaw had problems with the net (was actually problem when he tried to access Juno) and of course since I made changes - well, you know.

So at any rate, I'm going to try leaving the interface as dhcp and see if things get any further.

My next step is to edit the smb.conf file and just change the workgroup name to GWSTJS0001 to match the workgroup name I put in Windows 8. I'll see if anything shows on the Windows 8 computer after doing so.

So far I'm just leaving the USB drive unplugged since it appears to be a non-issue in this entire thing.

[squakie]

Okay, now I'm really confused. I still don't see anything in Windows 8. On the server I tried pinging my printer at 10.0.0.253 and it replies back, so the default network configuration does let me see something on the net. From the server I can also successfully ping the Windows 8 computer by IP address.

So, after all that, using the default network configuration and the default smb.conf file (except for the workgroup name), I'm still back to where I started from - Windows 8 doesn't see the workgroup or the server. I am really confused right now as it means things in the server must be configured right, yet Windows 8 doesn't see the server.