I can share external drive - but not give access to it (12.04)

[freebird54]

The situation:

I just built a new system, and decided to put 12.04 LTS and 13.10 on it - with 12.04 being the 'trusted workhorse' version - and the version with the following 'problem'. I also needed to make an external HD wirelessly available to an Android tablet for someone bedridden, and unable to store enough 'stuff' on any conceivable local storage.

Sharing the access to *MY* tablet was instantly accomplished (I recommend ES File Explorer on the tablet side) - with only the directories I specified appearing and being accessible. However, trying to set up the alternative user I mentioned above has NOT worked.

First no access to the 'server' - solved by sharing the whole drive. But nothing so far has enabled entry to the shared directories. While 'researching' possible causes, I noticed that the drive was *EQUALLY* inaccessible from a 'local' login at the physical keyboard as that user. No combination of attempts to use chown, chgrp, creating a group with access, attempting to see if ACL's were involved, or finding a GUI tool with an answer has yet met with success.

My knowledge is only partial (and outdated - my best CLI skills were on AmigaDOS!) - but the theory of networked access hasn't changed all that much since my days as netadmin on Netware4 - so it must be a slowing mind - or perhaps an unforeseen error in my starting point? Could the fact that I installed the OS with those drives hooked up (though unaccessed) have affected something? Is there a reason that chown and chgrp appear to make no changes at all? Any thoughts?

Thanks for any ideas

[mikewhatever]

If, presumably, you've allowed shared access from Nautilus, have you allowed guest and read/write access?
If you've done it from Terminal, showing the configs would have been useful.
Can you open a terminal window in Ubuntu, run <smbclient -L localhost>, and post the output.

[freebird54]

I can't seem to get any output from that command - as I can't get any valid reference for host name. What I have from the "other" end (on the Android) is: (approx)

Brother 7060D$
:pro?$:
Lora_C_Drive
Lora_D_Drive
print$

(can't remember the second entry - the 2 Loraxxx references are the directories to be shared)

I can fire it all up now if you need it exactly....

Thx

[mikewhatever]

Of cause, my bad, try <smbclient -L localhost>.

So, Lora_C and Lora_D are visible, but not accessible?

[freebird54]

I suspected that - but I'll have to switch over to the new box to get that correctly... back in 5....

[freebird54]

OK - back on the new box - here it is...

freebird@nest:~$ smbclient -L=nest
Enter freebird's password: 
Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.6.3]

	Sharename       Type      Comment
	---------       ----      -------
	print$          Disk      Printer Drivers
	IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (nest server (Samba, Ubuntu))
	Lora_C_Drive    Disk      
	Lora_D_Drive    Disk      
	Iomega HDD      Disk      
Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.6.3]

	Server               Comment
	---------            -------
	NEST                 nest server (Samba, Ubuntu)

	Workgroup            Master
	---------            -------
	WORKGROUP            NEST

I am afraid I did this from Nautilus - rather than setting up the whole thing myself - but I could have!

Does it tell you anything?


And - as it actually appears on Android:

Iomega HDD
IPC$
Lora_C_Drive
Lora_D_Drive
print$

It appears the same way whether I log in as freebird (self) or as Lora (sister) - but access not available to Lora's login. And nopt available locally to Lora's login either!

Thx

[mikewhatever]

So, Lora may not be in the sambashare group. Can you check with the id Lora command. Users outside the sambashare group login as guests, which is why I've asked about guest access above.
Alternatively, just add Lora to sambashare with sudo adduser Lora sambashare.

PS: I've no idea what "nopt" stands for.

[freebird54]

output =

freebird@nest:~$ id lora
uid=1001(lora) gid=1001(lora) groups=1001(lora),4(adm),20(dialout),21(fax),24(cdrom),25(floppy),26(tape),30(dip),44(video),46(plugdev),104(fuse),1002(remote)

and

freebird@nest:~$ sudo adduser lora sambashare
Adding user `lora' to group `sambashare' ...
Adding user lora to group sambashare
Done.

OK - I added Lora to sambashare - with no change in outcome. At the Android end, the message speculates that permissions are the problem with the failed attempt to access. Good idea, though! She wasn't in there...

P.S. nopt = no operation - often used in 68000 assembly to hold a place in the binary for self-modifying code to reside....
(or it could be a fat or slipped finger typo for not?)

[mikewhatever]

Now is a good idea to restart the Samba server to apply the new configs -

sudo service smbd stop

sudo service smbd start

You don't tell us much about the settings of the shares, but it looks like you've created the shares as yourself, so that only freebird has access. The way around this is allowing guest access, or using System-Config-Samba from the repositories to do it globally.

[freebird54]

Well - I tried both parts of those suggestions - to no avail. I first added guest access to both directories in Nautilus (it headed off to change permissions) - then I tried the stop and start commands. No luck. Then I tried adding guest access at the drive level as well - still no change in accessability.

I still have the feeling that Samba is doing everything right, and that the configuration is alright in that department. The problem, I still suspect, is that even when logging in locally, the lora account cannot get in to the folders....

Thanks for the help though - I'm sure SOME way will be found