Connecting to a samba share?

[Morbius1]

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[Morbius1]

You might want to take a step back and see if samba on both ends is working by trying to access the server by ip address:

nautilus smb://192.168.0.100

Change 192.168.0.100 to the ip address of the samba server.

This actually brought up the share, but I don't want to have to do this everytime.

Agreed, and if only you would have told us if a "ping THAULTSERV.local" worked we could perhaps find a resolution to this that does not require workgroups, netbios, master browsers , name resolve order and all the rest of the Windows baggage. All Linux machines can connect to each other with a hostname.local so all should be able to connect to each others samba share with a nautilus smb://hostname.local. At that point you can Bookmark it so it shows up as a sort of "mapped drive" in Nautilus sort of like it does in Windows Explorer. You can even set this up so it automatically shows up under networks in all your Linux clients. They key here is that they are in fact "local".

Which leads me to the next question. The very first sentence on your very first post stated:

I have an Ubuntu server running samba and I can see it on windows.

Are all these machines on a local lan or are you in fact trying to access a Samba server remotely over the Internet? The reason I'm asking this is because your other posts suggest you are trying to do this remotely: I connect to my server outside of the network

I may be reading to much into that. Perhaps you are just trying to administer the server remotely.

[bab1]

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@Morbuis1 -- maybe we should diagnose these things together in the background via PM or some other means.

My guess is that the OP has multiple problems. The smbtree -d3 output shows that the search for available shares never goes past using the /etc/hosts file

resolve_lmhosts: Attempting lmhosts lookup for name THAULTSERV<0x20>
resolve_wins: Attempting wins lookup for name THAULTSERV<0x20>
resolve_wins: WINS server resolution selected and no WINS servers listed.
resolve_hosts: Attempting host lookup for name THAULTSERV<0x20>
tdb(/var/run/samba/gencache.tdb): tdb_open_ex: could not open file /var/run/samba/gencache.tdb: No such file or directory
Connecting to 66.152.109.110 at port 445
Connecting to 66.152.109.110 at port 139
Error connecting to 66.152.109.110 (Success)
Connecting to 198.105.251.210 at port 445
Connecting to 198.105.251.210 at port 139
Error connecting to 198.105.251.210 (Success)
cli_start_connection: failed to connect to THAULTSERV<20> (0.0.0.0). Error NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL

...and it is incorrectly looking to the Internet for resolution (check the IP addresses listed).

On top of that I believe some of the diagnostic feedback is from a host that is not the Samba server.

I will be away for most of the day, so I will not have any comments until much later.

[thault]

I was trying to connect within the LAN, I use SSH to connect to the server during class. This is my first experience with Linux, sorry to be causing unnecessary work. I do appreciate the help you guys, and the Forums, has offered.

[Morbius1]

@Bab1, I've disabled PM so that won't work.

I'm going to take one more shot at this then you can get to the bcast first in name resolve order thingy. My way doesn't require it.

@ thault, Can you or can you not ping the Linux server from the Linux client by name:

ping THAULTSERV.local

If you cannot and both of these systems are both connected to the same router then disable both machine's firewalls and try it again.

EDIT: Then make sure avahi-daemon is running on both systems:

 sudo service avahi-daemon restart

And try it again.

[bab1]

I was trying to connect within the LAN, I use SSH to connect to the server during class. This is my first experience with Linux, sorry to be causing unnecessary work. I do appreciate the help you guys, and the Forums, has offered.

It doesn't matter whether you are connected to the console of the host that is the Samba server or connected to that server via ssh, you are still only connected to a local host. They are functionally the same in that context.

You are doing something completely different when you mount a portion of the remote server's file system (a share) via SMB/CIFS to your local machine's file system.

Using mDNS (.local) successfully means you need to have DNS working correctly to resolve the hostname first. Your network does not seem to be able to do that.

[bab1]

@Bab1, I've disabled PM so that won't work.

I'm going to take one more shot at this then you can get to the bcast first in name resolve order thingy. My way doesn't require it.

@ thault, Can you or can you not ping the Linux server from the Linux client by name:

ping THAULTSERV.local

If you cannot and both of these systems are both connected to the same router then disable both machine's firewalls and try it again.

I believe that mDNS is wounded (no DNS resolution at all). That's why there is no hosts lookup success and it hangs at that point.

Have at it with the OP. I'll check back later in the day.

[Morbius1]

If you are talking about the output of smbtree it's not looking for mDNS so we don't know from that what state it's in.

mDNS isn't dependent on another DNS it is a DNS.

It's automatic in Linux and you would have to take extra - ordinary steps to disable it. Or put a firewall in it's way. Or be in a different subnet than everyone else.
EDIT: Or avahi-daemon isn't running either on the server or the client.

[thault]

tault@ubuntu:~$ ping THAULTSERV.local
ping: unknown host THAULTSERV.local
tault@ubuntu:~$ ping 192.168.0.111
PING 192.168.0.111 (192.168.0.111) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.111: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=18.6 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.111: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=1.27 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.111: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=1.21 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.111: icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=1.19 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.111: icmp_req=5 ttl=64 time=4.49 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.111: icmp_req=6 ttl=64 time=1.18 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.111: icmp_req=7 ttl=64 time=1.77 ms
^C
--- 192.168.0.111 ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6007ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.189/4.257/18.664/5.985 ms
tault@ubuntu:~$ ping thaultserv
PING thaultserv (66.152.109.110) 56(84) bytes of data.
^C
--- thaultserv ping statistics ---
27 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 26208ms



thault@ThaultServ:~$ sudo service avahi-daemon restart
avahi-daemon: unrecognized service

The first block is the pings. pinging THAULTSERV.local didn't work. Pinging the LAN address of the server worked. Pinging thaultserv ended in packets dissapearing.

also the server doesn't have avahi.

[bab1]

If you are talking about the output of smbtree it's not looking for mDNS so we don't know from that what state it's in.

mDNS isn't dependent on another DNS it is a DNS.

I was in a hurry to leave earlier in the day. Let me restate my position. If DNS services are misconfigured or absent, then DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD) and mDNS won't work.

Quoting dns-sd.org:
"DNS Service Discovery is a way of using standard DNS programming interfaces, servers, and packet formats to browse the network for services.
See here and here. I'm sure you have read this. The last item refers to the first 2 items.

The OP does not have any mapping between IP address and hostname. His last post is evidence of that.

It's automatic in Linux and you would have to take extra - ordinary steps to disable it. Or put a firewall in it's way. Or be in a different subnet than everyone else.
EDIT: Or avahi-daemon isn't running either on the server or the client.

Another possibility is that the /etc/nsswitch.conf file is not configured correctly.

# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# Example configuration of GNU Name Service Switch functionality.
# If you have the `glibc-doc-reference' and `info' packages installed, try:
# `info libc "Name Service Switch"' for information about this file.

passwd:         compat
group:          compat
shadow:         compat

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
networks:       files

protocols:      db files
services:       db files
ethers:         db files
rpc:            db files

netgroup:       nis

For what it's worth, my Ubuntu 12.04 "server edition" hosts have an nsswitch.conf file that looks like this

# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# Example configuration of GNU Name Service Switch functionality.
# If you have the `glibc-doc-reference' and `info' packages installed, try:
# `info libc "Name Service Switch"' for information about this file.

passwd:         compat
group:          compat
shadow:         compat

hosts:          files dns
networks:       files

protocols:      db files
services:       db files
ethers:         db files
rpc:            db files

netgroup:       nis

...no Avahi references at all. So even if the avahi daemon was running it would not be queried.

I think it will be simpler in the end to diagnose what the OP really has wrong and fix that as opposed to just proposing things to try. All the options are still there for the user to apply in the end. My own personal opinion is to set everything up correctly and let the end user select what methods work best for them (e.g Avahi, bookmarking, network browsing, etc.).

Don't take the above in the wrong way. Most of what I speak of is only my interpretation of the documentation we both have.