Samba on Ubuntu - is it really this difficult?

[Andy]

Aroon Pahwa wrote:
> im having lots of issues with samba and file sharing with my windoze
> box as well.  unfortunately, i have no idea what im doing.  i was
> suprised to see that nautilus could see all my windoze boxes without
> any help but it failed to go anywhere past that (ie.  access any
> machines, list or access any shares, etc).  

There are (at least) two ways of accessing SMB shares - you can browse 
the network via Nautilus (or use "SMB://machine/sharename" in the 
address bar - same thing) which is convenient but limited, OR you can 
use smbfs which allows you to mount SMB shares into your file system.

> I realized that samba
> wasnt actually installed (wt?) so went ahead and installed it used
> synamptic.  

You _don't_ need to install the full samba package just to access shares 
on another machine - that loads the samba server (I believe) so other 
machines can see shares on the Linux box. Installing the smbfs package 
will allow you to mount shares on the other machine

> still no change in behaviour.  i started the samba deamon
> using smbd (thats how you do it right?).  

Again - only needed for the Windows box to see files on the Linux box, 
not the other way around.


> i also changed my workgroup
> to the same as the rest of my windows boxes using the configuration
> manager.

Certainly makes life simpler

> anyone have some advice.  im sure im missing a lot of steps in the
> process, many of which would lead to my failure as a human.  i havnt
> gotten a chance to google "setting up samba on Obuntu" yet.

See if this helps:

1. Install smbfs
2. Create a mount point (a directory/folder where you want the windows 
share to appear).
3. To mount a share open a terminal window and type something like the 
following (all one line):

sudo smbmount //SOL/copying /home/andrew/copymnt -o 
username=andrew,workgroup=ajblan,rw,uid=andrew

SOL		- name of the machine I'm connecting to
copying		- name of the share I'm connecting to
/home/andrew/copymnt
		- Mount point (wherever you want)
andrew (1)	- username on box you're connecting to
ajblan		- workgroup name on machine you're connecting to
andrew (2)	- username on linux box (so you own the files)

You may well be prompted for two passwords. The first will be your local 
box password (from sudo), the second will be your share password. If you 
only get one prompt (because you've just used sudo) it'll be the share 
password.

If all this sounds a little complicated I have a python program which 
can simplify it (let me know if you want a copy), or you could try 
linneighborhood - I haven't tried it on Ubuntu but I've found it easy to 
use on other Linux boxes.

HTH

Andy