Samba on Ubuntu - is it really this difficult?

[Andy A]

Thanks for the responses.  With that help, I think I am getting somewhere now, but not quite out the woods yet.

The SMB client *will* connect now with:

smbclient //SERVER/share -U myusername

I was getting problems earlier with that because I had a -L in front of the //SERVER/share.  So I can get a 'smb:' prompt and list the files, and pull them off the shares if I wished to do so.

I can also now mount the shares.  Had to install smbfs - bit of a surprise it wasn't installed by default, just haven't got tuned in to how minimal Ubuntu is yet.  Once that was done this worked:

mount -t smbfs //SERVER/share /mountpoint -o username=myuser,rw,uid=myuser

I get two password prompts and then it's mounted.  So far so good.  But....

Nautilus is not working properly.  In fact it's not really very useful, in that it will show the directories on the share (after a while), but when you try to browse in  one it just gets stuck and works...and works...and works...Sometimes it eventually says it can't open the folder.  At this point you can't 'ls' the share on the command line - get an input/output error - where all was fine Nautilus got it's panties in a pickle.  You can't even umount the share without using the -l option - without that you just get 'device is busy'.  And killing Nautilus doesn't help.  All of which is pretty frustrating.

Can anyone advise what I need to do to stop Nautilus throwing a wobbly?  Or is it just not very good with Samba shares.  Maybe there's an alternative file manager available?  

Thanks!
----- Original Message -----
From: Andy <ubuntu at arda.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 01:10:49 +0100
To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Samba on Ubuntu - is it really this difficult?

> 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
> 
> -- 
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users

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