Trouble accessing OpenSuse from Windows 7 network

I am new to Linux/Suse, having recently installed it and working in a satisfactory manner.

In my small office network I have Windows 7 installed on a workstation and Ecomstation (nee OS/2) and OpenSuse 13.2 installed on an older PC. A couple of other laptops running W7 access this network via WIFI. Now, the W7 machines communicate flawlessly amongst themselves, and they can see my EcomStation installation; however, Ecomstation cannot see W7 devices using the older IBM LAN Manager, but Samba for OS/2 can. Also, OpenSuse can see my W7 devices. The problem is–my W7 machines cannot see OpenSuse.

I am constantly prompted for a login id and password–my de facto id and pwd does not work, nor does “admin”, computer name, etc. I have looked at many references and suggestions around the problem online, but none of them work. Most sources point the finger at W7, but I am not 100% sure. Some say W8 and W10 do not have this problem. Is there any chance that the issue lies with OpenSuse? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I think you are talking about accessing Samba shares from Windows.

Windows does not use the normal password database. So use the “smbpasswd” command to add passwords that Windows can use. You will probably need to run that as root, to setup an initial password for each user who wants access from Windows. Thereafter, users can change their own (with “smbpasswd”).

The question is whether you can “see” the machine on the network or not, and only then any SAMBA/CIFS shares.

You seem to be describing a Workgroup (not a Domain) network architecture, so you need to start with verifying all your machines are configured with the same Workgroup name.

In openSUSE, you can easily do this by
YAST > Network Settings (or Devices) > Hostnames tab

The first part of your name is the machine name, the second is the Workgroup name and on openSUSE the default is “site”

Once you configure the above, then your openSUSE should be able to “see” all other machines on your network configured with that same Workgroup name, but not necessarily access any network shares(You’ll need to configure your SAMBA or Windows Networking permissions to access). Other machines may or may not “see” your openSUSE because an idiosyncrasy sometimes encountered is that unless the Workgroup name is configured correctly <and> a SAMBA/CIFS share is configured the machine may not display.

HTH,
TSU

just to confirm, yes I can see the OpenSuse computer from my W7 machine, it is just the shared devices that I can’t access.

Yes, it is a workgroup, not a domain setting. All workgroup, login and password names are the same across all machines.

I will look at the two replies in detail and see if any of those “tweeks” will help.

Question for Nrickert: I assume you mean that I have to create different USER accounts in Suse first and assign a password different from the default login password used in Windows?

Then I would login as “use other account” or whatever W7 requests…?

Thanks.

Problem solved–just a bit more research and found this link:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/adding-a-user-to-a-samba-smb-share/

Sure would be nice if W7 could see Linux directly without these extra steps, but hey, who said life was meant to be easy!

Good that it is fixed. This might be worth a look, same thing here: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/510472-Samba-issue-Tumbleweed