HOWTO: Setup Samba peer-to-peer with Windows

[JawsThemeSwimming428]

I just went through the walkthrough and I still can not get my Ubuntu machine to share with my Windows machine. I think I followed all of the instructions pretty closely and I'm not quite sure what the problem is. When I go to map the network drive in Windows I type in \\the correct name\Ubuntu and then it comes up with the path could not be found. What should I do now?

[navlelo]

Great Howto! I had some problems on Edgy, but when I went back to Dapper, the Samba configuration was quick and easy, and almost problem free. I have two remaining problems and a question that I haven't managed to solve by myself:

Problem 1:
This is probably a Windows Xp issue. On my main XP account (with admin rights) I can not log in to my Ubuntu box automaticly. The mounted network drives give an error message every time I log on to the account. Another account on the same XP box logs in automaticly without any problems. I have checked many times that the user name and password are exactly the same in XP and Ubuntu/Samba.

Problem 2:
Guests can not browse my shared folder although I have set "guest ok = yes". I can not see what folders the server has without logging in with a user account that is registered in Ubuntu/Samba.

Question:
My computer is almost always on, and my guests frequently use it for browsing the Internet or my media files. They have full access to all my personal files because I don't feel it is natural or polite to make them log on as a different user. Is there a way to make an area on my network drive that is protected by an extra password prompt when I'm already logged in?

I could of course make an additional, extra private, user account on both the XP and the server, but I won't bother to log on to a different account just to add a number in a spreadsheet or something like that.

I hope someone has one or more answers for me!

[ImpelGD]

Is there a way to make an area on my network drive that is protected by an extra password prompt when I'm already logged in?

I believe you could add another share with any username and password of your choosing. When you wish to access it with XP, use the 'connect as different user' option (or similar) and use your chosen details. Uncheck remember/automatically log on.

[navlelo]

I believe you could add another share with any username and password of your choosing. When you wish to access it with XP, use the 'connect as different user' option (or similar) and use your chosen details. Uncheck remember/automatically log on.

Thank you for the suggestion, but it doesn't work. If I try to log on a different folder on the same server with a different username, I get the error (translated by me from Norwegian): "More than one connection from the same user to a server or shared resource, by the help of more than one username, is not allowed. Disconnect all previous connections to the server or shared resource, and try again." I don't know if there is a way to change this limitation on the Windows side, at least I haven't found it.

As long as I am logged in to a folder on the server, I can access all other folders available to that user without being prompted for a password. The closest thing I've got now is a folder that isn't browsable, and therefore can only be accessed by typing the correct folder name. While it is better than nothing, it's neither practical nor completely safe.

I am still hoping there is a setting in Samba that forces a new login for a resource, and I still have no solution to the two other problems in the post above.

[linuxguiri]

Great howto! It would be great if you posted this on the wiki. The one that's already posted there as well as the official help guide are way over my head (and probably a lot of other users).

For the benefit of others who might have the same problem:
I ran into this error when I attempted to access the share from WinXP:
"\\linuxhostname is not accessible. You might not have permission to use..."

Apparently the solution is to open some specific ports on the ubuntu firewall. As I didn't know how to do this, I just temporarily disabled the ubuntu firewall via Firestarter. If anyone knows which ports and how to open them up, please let me know.

[dannyboy79]

For the benefit of others who might have the same problem:
I ran into this error when I attempted to access the share from WinXP:
"\\linuxhostname is not accessible. You might not have permission to use..."

You are missing the share name, so if you were sharing a folder on your linuxhostname computer called dave, then in winbloz, you type in \\linuxhostname\dave. keep in mind that the user you logged in with in winbloz should be the same user and password that you did the smbpasswd -a username command.

Apparently the solution is to open some specific ports on the ubuntu firewall. As I didn't know how to do this, I just temporarily disabled the ubuntu firewall via Firestarter. If anyone knows which ports and how to open them up, please let me know.

You may be decieving others on accident, Ubuntu has a firewall installed by default (iptables) but does NOT have any rules enabled by default. So that means that there are NO PORTS being blocked going in or going out after a fresh install of ubuntu desktop version. (not sure about the lamp version or server versions) Your problem sounds weird as you say it works when you turn the firewall off, this must be because you enabled rules by default. The ports that you want to add if you'd like are netbios-ns 137/tcp # NetBIOS Name Service
netbios-ns 137/udp
netbios-dgm 138/tcp # NetBIOS Datagram Service
netbios-dgm 138/udp
netbios-ssn 139/tcp # NetBIOS Session Service
netbios-ssn 139/udp
microsoft-ds 445/tcp # Microsoft Directory Service
microsoft-ds 445/udp
which is documented here: http://troy.jdmz.net/samba/fw/ but I don't believe that's your issue unless you did previously set up your firewall.

[zaziork]

Please start up VMware, open a command prompt, and type:

ipconfig /all

Please post the output into a reply (or PM me if it's a public IP address).

Firstly, thank you, Stormbringer, for the HowTo. Very much appreciate it.

May I ask either "Core" or yourself: In general terms, what was the resolution to the "an extended error has occured" error, about which you corresponded in private? I'm having exactly the same problem...

TIA.

[lime4x4]

ok i followed the guide i can browse my other hard drives that are on another ubuntu box but it will not let me write to the drives here is a copy of my file that pertains to my shares
[MyFiles]
path = /media
browseable = yes
read only = yes
guest ok = yes
create mask = 0644
directory mask = 0755
force user = mythtv
force group = mythtv

i'm i correct in assuming i also need to add

write=yes

[themikeflynn]

"The drive could not be mapped because no network was found."

I get this error after following the guide. Windows won't recognize the network. When i go to "My Network Places >> Entire Network >> Microsoft Windows Network" everything starts getting slow, as if it realizes something is there, but it won't go through. The connection is fine; I've had no trouble accessing my LAMP server that I have set up. But I just can't get this filesharing via Samba to work out.

Any advice?

[adamkane]

The HOWTO is a wee-bit over-long. Here's how you do it:

Install samba-common.

sudo apt-get install samba-common

Right-click folder you want to share.

Enable the folder for sharing.

Add a Samba user:

sudo smbpasswd -a system_username
gksudo gedit /etc/samba/smbusers

Insert the following line into the new file

system_username = "network username"

Save the edited file

To delete network user:

sudo smbpasswd -x system_username

Done.