Samba on Ubuntu - is it really this difficult?

[Andy A]

Aargh!  Why is Samba so hideously difficult to set up on Ubuntu?  Did I not read somewhere Ubuntu it is meant to be 'user friendly'?

I have managed to figure out setting Samba up on Debian Sarge, plus Mandrake, Slackware, even Windows.  Got the last 3 talking nicely to Sarge, one way or another without too much hair-pulling.

But can I achieve the same from Ubuntu to/from Sarge?  Is the Pope a Protestant?

I have spent several frustrating hours trying now.  I hope someone can see what I am missing.  

>From a fresh install of 'Warty', Nautilus seemed to see the shares on the Sarge box though I could not understand how.  But it could not access the files on them - just worked forever.  

So I installed Samba package in addition to the already installed smbclient, though I thought I shouldn't have to.  Started smbd/nmbd with 'sudo /etc/init.d/samba start'.  Set the workgroup name in /etc/samba/smb.conf and checked it with testparm.  Created a Samba user and password.  Re-started the daemons.  Now Nautilus can't even see the workgroup, never mind the shares.  Just sits there working.  If I try to mount a share ('sudo mount -t smbfs //SERVER/share /mountpoint' I get a password prompt, but then : mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //SERVshare, or too many mounted file systems'

OK, so I check the SMB client.  'smbclient -L localhost' gives me the listing for the WAarty box as expected.  'smbclient -L servername' lists the shares on the Sarge box as expected once I enter the password.  Same with 'smbclient -L //DEBIAN/sharename -U myuser', but I do NOT get the smb: prompt I expect after tha one.  So the client is working, sort of, but not very useful.  And an attempt to mount a share give the same result as above.

Help!  I'm completely stuck.  The same setup on the Sarge box works fine when connected with everything but Ubuntu.  What have I missed?  Any suggestions gratefully received

And incidentally, is Swat really not included in the Ubuntu Samba package or am I just losing the plot completely?

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