Just returned to SUSE after years with Kubuntu, pleased with everything except networking which is horribly complex. I need a simple tutorial on connecting to Windows shares on a SOHO network.Everything I can find relates to previous versions, and most use jargon I don’t understand. The error messages in Dolphin are no help at all. With the Firewall off I can see an icon representing my Windows workgroup but with ?] on it. Clicking it I get ‘File or folder does not exist’. With the Firewall on, even configured for Samba, I get nothing at all.
I’ve installed Smb4K to see if that helps. It sniffs out the shares OK but won’t mount them. It tells me to read man mount.cifs, but that is irrelevent to to point’n’click user.
On Kubuntu Dolphin just mounts Windows shares, SUSE is making it very hard work. Is there a SIMPLE way round all this?
On Tue February 10 2009 10:56 am, phil thane wrote:
>
> Just returned to SUSE after years with Kubuntu, pleased with everything
> except networking which is horribly complex. I need a simple tutorial on
> connecting to Windows shares on a SOHO network.Everything I can find
> relates to previous versions, and most use jargon I don’t understand.
> The error messages in Dolphin are no help at all. With the Firewall off
> I can see an icon representing my Windows workgroup but with ?] on it.
> Clicking it I get ‘File or folder does not exist’. With the Firewall on,
> even configured for Samba, I get nothing at all.
>
> I’ve installed Smb4K to see if that helps. It sniffs out the shares OK
> but won’t mount them. It tells me to read man mount.cifs, but that is
> irrelevent to to point’n’click user.
>
> On Kubuntu Dolphin just mounts Windows shares, SUSE is making it very
> hard work. Is there a SIMPLE way round all this?
>
>
Phil;
You might find the HowTos located here more specific to OpenSuse 11.1:
Swerdna has written a number of easy to follow HowTos specifically for recent
versions of OpenSuse. The big change for 11.1 is in the Firewall. If you
installed 11.0 there was a bug in KDE4.0 that prevented viewing Samba Shares.
If you have OpenSuse 11.0 either upgrade to KDE4.1 or install KDE3.5.
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green
I read the Swerdna stuff before posting. Frankly I lose the will to live half way through a load of command line stuff like that. This is a fresh install of SUSE 11.1 on a brand new hard drive, so no probs with upgrades. The firewall is off (I’m behind a firewalled ADSL modem)
The error message details from Smb4K say refer to man mount.cifs but that doesn’t help, it just tells command line users how it should work, not what to do if it doesn’t.
Dolphin doesn’t even see the remote shares, only the local ones (I’m running samba server too) but I can’t access even those since Samba won’t authorise me, on my own PC!
Check the Samba daemons are running: goto Yast → system → system services runlevels and make sure “nmb” and “smb” have a “yes” on them.
Check you have the same workgroup name as the windows machines. That’s in Yast → network services (stay out of windows domain membership verboten) → Samba server → Identity.
While there, put the name by which you want the Suse machine to be known on the network into the slot called Netbios Name.
Click advanced settings → expert global → and make sure these three lines are there:
name resolve order = bcast host lmhosts wins
preferred master = yes
os level = 33
When done restart the Samba daemons but if you still hate the CLI that is done with a reboot.
If that doesn’t improve things then post back here the contents of your file smb.conf located at /etc/samba/smb.conf
OK, first I replaced the file with the one you link from Swerdna.net, then edited it as described on that site, then edited some more as described on the post above. Still doesn’t work, but here’s the complete file:
smb.conf is the main Samba configuration file. You find a full commented
version at /usr/share/doc/packages/samba/examples/smb.conf.SUSE if the
samba-doc package is installed.
Date: 2008-08-27
[global]
workgroup = BRYN.VILLA
netbios name = PHILS
name resolve order = bcast host lmhosts wins
printing = cups
printcap name = cups
printcap cache time = 750
cups options = raw
map to guest = Bad User
include = /etc/samba/dhcp.conf #logon path = \%L\profiles.msprofile #logon home = \%L%U.9xprofile #logon drive = P:
usershare allow guests = Yes
[homes]
comment = Home Directories
valid users = %S, %D%w%S
browseable = No
read only = No
inherit acls = Yes
[profiles]
comment = Network Profiles Service
path = %H
read only = No
store dos attributes = Yes
create mask = 0600
directory mask = 0700
[users]
comment = All users
path = /home
read only = No
inherit acls = Yes
veto files = /aquota.user/groups/shares/
[groups]
comment = All groups
path = /home/groups
read only = No
inherit acls = Yes
[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/tmp
printable = Yes
create mask = 0600
browseable = No
[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /var/lib/samba/drivers
write list = @ntadmin root
force group = ntadmin
create mask = 0664
directory mask = 0775
Thanks for taking the trouble. Can’t help feeling the SUSE interface on top of Ubuntu would be the way to go! I only dropped Kubuntu becuase they fouled up on KDE4 and OO3.
server is my file server PC (an old P3 running ubuntu and Samba) bryn.villa is my windows domain so I’ve got server.bryn.villa, lindas.bryn.villa and phils.bryn.villa (the last one is my SUSE box.)
Bizarre new fact. I’m running VirtualBox on SUSE and in that I have a dualboot Windows/Kubuntu virtual machine (I’m a journalist and working on a piece about partitioning, dual booting etc). If I run Kubuntu then Dolphin can navigate the whole network without any setup changes at all, even though it’s doing so from within SUSE!
I think the next step might be to copy the Kubuntu smb.conf and replace the SUSE one!
On Wed February 11 2009 05:06 am, phil thane wrote:
> Dolphin doesn’t even see the remote shares, only the local ones (I’m
> running samba server too) but I can’t access even those since Samba
> won’t authorise me, on my own PC!
phil;
You need to add Samba users. This does require you use the CLI on Suse. From
a terminal window enter the following:
su
<enter root's password at the prompt>
smbpasswd -a <username>
smbpasswd will prompt for the password to use for Samba. <username> is the
name of the user you want to give access to the shares. It must be a valid
local log on name. The password you assign need not be the same as the one
used for log on.
This is actually the easiest way to create these users. If the usernames on
Ubuntu and Suse differ, you will need to add the Ubuntu users to Suse and
make them Samba Users and vica versa.
–
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green
On Wed February 11 2009 08:26 am, phil thane wrote:
> server is my file server PC (an old P3 running ubuntu and Samba)
Do you know the version of Samba running on the P3 or at least if it’s at
least Samba 3.0.x?
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green
re the server it’s running Ubuntu 7.04 (I think) so whatever was the Samba version then. It runs ‘headless’ just sits in a cupboard minding it’s own business, so it never gets any upgrades. I can access it via ssh and use rsync to back up to it, my wife uses drag and drop from WinXP to store stuff there and when I’m testing something on my testbed PC it’s handy to have a place I can drop stuff stuff, then retrieve it from my ‘work’ PC. Which is why I need Samba.
If ever I sort this,next issue will be printing. Our shared printer is on the XP box (so the wife can use it without bothering with Linux) and in the past I was able to connect to it from Kubuntu…
On Thu February 12 2009 05:16 am, phil thane wrote:
>
> And what if the same user (phil) exists on the Ubuntu and SUSE PCs, but
> with different passwords?
>
> I’ve just added ‘phil’ as a Samba user, but still can’t access phil on
> the Ubuntu file server.
>
>
They need the same Samba-User password, also for XP. Looking at your smb.conf
(posted elsewhere in this thread) a username without a Samba entry would end
up mapping to the guest account ( by default the guest account is “nobody”.)
The guest should have access to your “user defined” shares, but not to the
others.
For the “user defined” shares to work well you may need to add the following
to the [global] section of /etc/samba/smb.conf.
usershare owner only = False
–
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green
On Thu February 12 2009 05:06 am, phil thane wrote:
>
> re the server it’s running Ubuntu 7.04 (I think) so whatever was the
> Samba version then. It runs ‘headless’ just sits in a cupboard minding
> it’s own business, so it never gets any upgrades. I can access it via
> ssh and use rsync to back up to it, my wife uses drag and drop from
> WinXP to store stuff there and when I’m testing something on my testbed
> PC it’s handy to have a place I can drop stuff stuff, then retrieve it
> from my ‘work’ PC. Which is why I need Samba.
>
> If ever I sort this,next issue will be printing. Our shared printer is
> on the XP box (so the wife can use it without bothering with Linux) and
> in the past I was able to connect to it from Kubuntu…
>
>
With 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), it should be an early version of Samba 3.0.x. Take a
peak at the contents of it’s, (Feisty Fawn’s), smb.conf. Does the global
section have: “security = share”? (My money is on yes.) If it does add that
to your /etc/samba/smb.conf on the Opensuse. This way you do not need to
worry about Samba Users at all.
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green
This thread is confusing, it seems you have a problem with smb4k and “mount.cifs” (and “umount.cifs”) but everyone is talking about configuring a server.
Anyway, nobody tells you you need to run mount.cifs as root for smb4k to work right. Do this:
su
chmod a+s /sbin/mount.cifs
chmod a+s /sbin/umount.cifs
purists will dislike this since it allows all users on your computer to mount anything they like at anytime – but they have to be logged in already so don’t worry.
BTW: The permission command I suggest means that when you run, “mount.cifs”, you will automatically have the user permissions (root in this case) during the time you run the command. Since “mount.cifs” doesn’t spawn off anything you can’t control, such as “bash”, it’s not a security risk.