local net not working

[rikona]

Hello Bill,

Monday, October 25, 2010, 12:39:48 PM, Bill wrote:

B> On 10/25/2010 10:38 AM, rikona wrote:
>> Installed Lucid on a 2nd box on the local net. [The 1st box is OK - it
>> can see/access the win boxes, and vice versa.] The 2nd box can't see
>> others or be seen by others. The box2 inet works fine, and I can ping
>> either in or out to/from local boxes [all have fixed IP addresses].
>>
>> I did some samba 'setup' using info on the UB site, but there are
>> multiple pages showing how to do it, and they are different, as are
>> non-UB samba setup pages. The current state on box2 has a very
>> different smb.conf compared to box1 [which works]. The box2 smb.conf
>> has all the comments stripped out and some entries that are not in
>> either the working smb.conf or the original installed file. And, the
>> 'samba menu' app on box2 says it doesn't like some entries in
>> smb.conf. It looks like my 'setup' may have just messed up things...
>>
>> Not sure how to proceed. Would it be a good idea to copy the working
>> smb.conf from box1 to box2 and restart samba? Or would there be a way
>> to just 'start over'? Or is there yet another approach that might work
>> better?
>>
>> TIA,
>>
>> rikona
>>
>>
B> First thing you should always do when your changing a .conf file is
B> copy it to a .old file. In other words cp smb.conf smb.conf.old
B> That way you always have the original.

Agreed. I did that and I do have the original.

B> Now I would copy the one smb.conf from the working machine and use
B> that as a start to configure your #2 machine. Samba can sometimes
B> be a bear.

I've noticed that... :-))

B> It took me a couple of tries before I got it right the first time I
B> tried it.

Took me more than a couple last time I did it [about 3-4 yrs ago on
Mandriva].

B> There is a good web app that allows you to configure a ton of
B> things on your machine including Samba its called webmin. Look it
B> up it may help you out.

Somehow I thought that was a KDE thing - and it does not show up in
Synaptic. I did check it and there is a deb version. Might try that.

There's a gadmin-samba app for UB, and I thought that might be
helpful. It was not that helpful for me. That may have been the app
that stripped all the comments and unused options from the file - a
really bad idea for me if I then need to go in and change smb.conf.
Whatever app I use, I'd like it to leave the original as intact as
possible.

But, I decided to keep trying with the UB app. I'd have to go back to
the original smb.conf to read the comments and get an idea of what
each parameter does, since ANY extra stuff, and all comments, were
stripped out. Finally got rid of the pesky, erroneous 'WORKGROUP' it
kept insisting the box was in, even though not that way in the conf
file. It also put in the wrong 192... addresses; fixed that too. A few
more fixes and it finally worked in one direction, but not both. Won't
bore you with the additional stuff, but the key was to put an lmhosts
file in etc/samba, with the local boxes and [fixed] IPs. That got it
working [mostly] in both directions. It's probably a bit more open
than I'd like, but at least it works...

B> Other than that ceck out samba.org and see if that has any info you
B> need. 

I've used that before. Ubuntu was hinting that they have simplified
samba setup significantly, so I thought I'd use the UB help info
instead. I've found multiple UB sites, but they are giving conflicting
instructions, and following the one I used originally did not work.

But - thanks much for the help and hints. It helped as I was wrestling
with the samba bear. :-)

-- 

 rikona