[Lucid] Network Error

[Lucio M Nicolosi]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 8:30 PM, Jim Smith <jim at oz.net> wrote:
>
> When I click on the "Network" location the window opens showing "Windows
> Network."
> Clicking on that item gives the following error message: "Unable to
> mount location, failed to retrieve share list from server." Curious as
> this did not happen before the upgrade to Lucid. Using the Lucid LiveCD
> the network mounts fine and I can do the usual things with the shared
> files on our other computer. Ideas? Googling didn't get me anything
> seemingly connected with Lucid. Probably right in front of me, just
> can't see it.

No answers up to now, so here I go:

Short answer: Still don't know why it happens...

Regular answer: How I deal with it:

It also happens to me (like it did a quarter of an hour ago, but not
now since Nautilus / Windows Network was kept open and somehow the bug
vanished) (while running Lucid AMD64 and lots (all?) of previous
releases)

It seems random (certainly isn't). I guess it might be related to the
default search time, Samba release, server/client startup order, (time
that you keep Nautilus / W Network open)  or the weather conditions. I
didn't  go deep on the subject but noticed that these actions seem to
help:

- Fill (if possible, i.e. in a small net) the /etc/hosts files and the
Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (or wherever you can find "hosts"
in MSW, with the IP/Host_Name of the computers in the net.

- Configure the leanest still working /etc/samba/smb.conf file.
"testparm" command returns what is not default, "testparm -v" returns
all config parameters.

- Don't place a lot of Samba servers in the same subnet if you don't
know how to configure parameters "local master" "preferred master"
etc. correctly.

- Keep Nautilus / W Network open while you relax, take a cup of tea
and read your favorite magazine and then go back and try again, it
might work or not.

- In Nautilus try Go / Location (Ctrl+L) and replace network:/// or
smb/// with network://[host_name]/ or network://[host_IP]/ (or
smb//xxx/ etc. (from a Windows station \\host_IP\)

On Windows or Ubuntu, accessing the remote computer with the IP
address always work. Say, most of the time.

Hope it helps, if you find something more specific about this bug
please post back.

Lucio


--
L M Nicolosi, Eng.
Linux Regist. User #481505 - http://counter.li.org/