unable to see samba share from client machines

[badperson]

Hi,
I just set up an ubuntu 9.10 server (no desktop environment, command line only) and I'm unable to see my samba share.

I followed these instruction (https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/serverguide/C/samba-fileserver.html)s.

Here are the relevant parts of my smb.conf file:


workgroup = JASONGROUP
# I un-commented this
security = user

## I created this at the bottom
[share]
comment = Ubuntu Server Shared Files
path = /media/shared-files/root
browsable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
create mask = 0777






The instructions say to enter these commands:

sudo mkdir -p /srv/samba/share
sudo chown nobody.nogroup /srv/samba/share/


but when entering the "chown" command, I get this:

sudo chown nobody.nogroup /media/shared-files/root
chown: changing ownership of `/media/shared-files/root': Operation not permitted



The client machines (a desktop with an ubuntu and windows partition and a mac laptop) are able to see that a shared folder exists, but are unable to open it or write to it. From the ubuntu desktop machine I enter smb://<ip address>/ but when I double-click on the "share" folder, I get "Unable to Mount Location -- Failed to Mount Windows share"

ideas?

thanks,
bp

[Iowan]

What are results of:
ls -al /media/shared-files
I presume you first did:
sudo mkdir -p /media/shared-files/rootYou restarted the Samba server afterward?

[badperson]

jason@jason-server:/$ ls -al /media/shared-files
total 36
drwx------ 3 jason root 16384 1969-12-31 19:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2010-02-15 15:16 ..
drwx------ 2 jason root 16384 2010-02-15 17:25 root
jason@jason-server:/$



I did do the mkdir....and I restarted the samba server.

thanks!
bp

[Iowan]

I'm curious why the chown didn't work - check /etc/passwd and /etc/group (you'll probably need sudo) to verify nobody and nogroup exist.

[ant2ne]

try the link in my sig.

[badperson]

I'm curious why the chown didn't work - check /etc/passwd and /etc/group (you'll probably need sudo) to verify nobody and nogroup exist.

hi,
they're both there.
bp

[capscrew]

...
The instructions say to enter these commands:

sudo mkdir -p /srv/samba/share
sudo chown nobody.nogroup /srv/samba/share/


That has to be a typo. From the chown man page:
The owner and group operands are both optional; however, at least one
must be specified. If the group operand is specified, it must be
preceded by a colon (``:'') character.


I believe this command will work:
sudo chown nobody:nogroup /srv/samba/share/

[badperson]

still getting this:

jason@jason-server:/$ sudo chown nobody:nogroup /media/shared-files/root
chown: changing ownership of `/media/shared-files/root': Operation not permitted


the shared folder is on a newly installed hard drive...is it possible I didn't format it correcty? I can create new folders and files on the drive from within the server...

bp

[badperson]

I was able to get the share to work when I changed the shared folder to /srv/samba/share.

But I want to have the shared files on their own dedicated drive...so it sucks that I cant't do that. Any help would be appreciated.
bp

[Morbius1]

Um ...... by any chance is /media/shared-files a FAT32 or NTFS partition?

Can't use chown on a windows filesystem - has to be done in fstab.

[badperson]

it's fat32, as per the reccomendation of the docs.
bp

[Morbius1]

Well, here's how I see things. If you want to have /media/shared-files with owner=nobody then you're going to have to mount it that way in fstab.

For example:


/dev/sdb1 /media/shared-files vfat defaults,utf8,uid=65534,gid=65534 0 2 To make sure that nobody = 65534 issue the following command in a terminal: id nobody.

The second thing is this:

[share]
comment = Ubuntu Server Shared Files
path = /media/shared-files/root
browsable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
create mask = 0777
That's not going to have any affect since you can't change permissions on a FAT32 partition either. So you're going to have to add one more thing to the fstab entry for that partition: umask=0000

So the final entry would look something like this:


/dev/sdb1 /media/shared-files vfat defaults,utf8,umask=0000,uid=65534,gid=65534 0 2You'd have to change the /dev/sdb1 to the appropriate value

[Iowan]

FWIW, I tried the example and successfully "chown'ed" using nobody.nogroup.
Um ...... by any chance is /media/shared-files a FAT32 or NTFS partition?
Can't use chown on a windows filesystem - has to be done in fstab.Good point! All my Samba servers share directories from Linux filesystem - probably why my test worked.

@bp
Can you link to the instructions calling for FAT32 file system?

[badperson]

I think I should reformat the drive as ext3...vista has no problem connecting to the main drive on the server which is formatted that way.
bp

[Iowan]

If it's a new installation (only thing to lose is time), it might be worth the effort.

[badperson]

solved. I deleted the partition, created a new one and formatted the drive as ext3. That seemed to do the trick.
bp

[rje_nc]

I find that when I want to mount to Samba shares I need to install smbfs. This is not installed by default in Ubuntu but for me it allows me to mount and connect to samba shares without problems.

[Iowan]

[SOLVED] (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnansweredPostsTeam/SolvedThreads)?

[badperson]

sorry...stupid question...how do you mark a post as solved? I didn't see a button or a way to do it by editing...

[Iowan]

The link (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnansweredPostsTeam/SolvedThreads) should explain it - only wish they'd had screenshots of the "Thread Tools" pulldown and the "Mark this thread as solved" option.