Filesharing with Windows and NAS box

I’m not a complete newbie but I have limited command line
experience and worse yet a spinal condition left me without feeling in my
hands. Therefore I cannot really type and when I do it is very slow and painful
and not very accurate.I prefer to use the graphical interface when ever possible for this reason.

I need a clear and concise tutorial on how to mount a shared
Windows folder, bidirectionally or a shared folder on my NAS box with 16.04 MATE. I use a Synology NAS box and I’m using Windows 7 ultimate. I am not very good at networking and so I need something pretty straightforward. I learn very fast but most tutorials I find are all command line and they moved so fast I cannot follow.

When I use caja I have the option to right-click and share a
folder and yet my Linux boxes only show up intermittently in Windows Explorer and you can never connect to them.

I have so many questions. Do I need to install samba separately? I have a samba folder in my etc folder so I assume not. At least
that was my understanding when I installed it. I assume that I need to make
some changes to my fstab file and maybe to my smb.conf file but there are no
instructions anywhere.

Tutorials on YouTube only raise more questions than they
answer. What sort of credentials is required? I have no domain only a work
group. I use no logon password on Windows. When I try to log on to my work
group when I browse the network with Ubuntu and I come to my PC it once a
username domain and password. As I stated previously I don’t use the domain or
a password but I cannot continue without one. Why is this? Must I create a
domain and password? I would really rather not as I said my hands don’t work
and I live alone so it is a huge unnecessary hassle.

Well that is a pretty good start. Let’s start with Windows
and then move on to the NAS box.

Any help is welcome

Apologies in advance if I’ve missed the mark.
I have a NAS and connect to it via Windows, UM, and MAC … no extra software was required for UM, Win, or MAC

On UM (eg. hostname canyon), you should be able to right click on a folder, share that folder (eg. public) with everyone and allow guests. That information is stored in /var/lib/samba/usershares/public.

On win7, you should configure the Advanced Sharing options in the Network and sharing Center to allow discovery and uncheck the password discovery in the Public section. You may have to right click on the share properties to change permissions so that everyone can R/W there.

I have the same setup and from win7, I can ‘see’ the ubuntu share, \\canyon\public

HTH

PLEASE, clarify me this. You have one machine with W7 and a NAS SERVER running Ubuntu MATE? What is the purpose of the NAS for you?

If that’s all you have and there’s not a lot of people working like in an office or company I suggest you not to use samba. Use NFS instead.

I will include screenshots. At the end “when you talk about”
seeing” the Ubuntu share I assume that you are typing that in the run command
on Windows 7?

I did as you said and right-click the public folder and went
to sharing and game at full permissions for everyone including guests. Likewise
on Windows 7 I made sure for the home network and the public network that
password protection was turned off, network discovery was on etc. yet still the
Windows machine can see both of my Ubuntu boxes in Windows Explorer but get
errors when trying to connect and Windows diagnostic so that they are not
turned on which is nonsense.

When I try to get to Windows with UM I see the Windows
network then I see my workgroup name that when trying to log on it asked me for
a username a domain and password which is I stated previously I am using a
workgroup not a domain and there is no password.

I can easily file share on mapped drives online as box and
they simply show up as any other drive in Windows. When I try to do it with UM
it asked me for a username and password which is a real hassle because I have
no feeling in my hands. I’m usually using a laptop with a mouse in a position
where typing is extremely difficult. Yes I can log on to the NAS box but only
after typing in a username and password. Windows not requiring this. I realize
that Ubuntu is not Windows but there must be a way to permanently log on. It
gives me the option to remember forever but it doesn’t remember forever. On the
next reboot I must log on to the NAS again. Is there any way to have it
remember my credentials?

Of course when it comes to the Windows logon from UM I don’t
even know what credentials they want!

Am I making any sense to you? I am relatively new to Linux so I hope I am not embarrassing myself with newbie questions.

I have one machine with Windows 7 which is my main computer.
I have it connected to a Synology NAS box with no problems. I have one UM laptop
and one UM home theater PC which is a new mini box that I built from scratch
with an Intel I3. I am trying without luck to get them to all work together
sharing files and folders with zero luck.

The NAS box uses the Synology operating not Ubuntu. I use it
as my central fileserver for all my video, music, pictures and documents. While
it is great with Windows with Linux I need to manually logon each time which I
do not want to do. I wanted to automatically log on like Windows does because
of my hands which have no feeling. I am doing this using Dragon
NaturallySpeaking as I could never type this.

I want to be able to share files and folders without logging
on just like a Windows network between UM and Windows because I want to help
other people do this not necessarily for myself. I want to be able to do it for
myself so I know how but primarily want to learn to help new people get into
the LinuxWorld. If Linux won’t play nice with Windows or NAS boxes that will be
harder to achieve.

How do we make limits and Windows play nice together?

And here is my ignorance showing but I really don’t know how
to use NFS so I would need to learn. This is all for home use so maybe right
and I shouldn’t use sambal at all. Shall I try to remove caja and without
remove sambal? I don’t care how I do it I just need to find a way that I can
understand.

Thanks for your help and patience

Robert

After a reboot, I have to enter my user/pw to access my win7 system. The
prompt for user/pw (second screen) needs your ubuntu user/pw. But Pfeifer
wrote, you don’t need all this. Maybe he can add details.

Any ideas on what I would put down for domain? Is the username case-sensitive? Is it one of the same as my hostname? As you can see the user, I think is “gilda” yet the hostname is Gilda – desktop so I will try just playing Gilda with lowercase. Should I leave the domain blank or put in my work group name perhaps?
Apparently there is some way to automatically log on by editing some configuration file and adding my credentials but I am unsure on how to do that. Any links to any tutorials would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your help.

When I first connected with Windows 7 which is been a while
I believe I had to put in the username and password that I set up on the NAS
box. If I remember correctly Windows offered to remember the credentials and I
said yes and have never been asked again. I mapped several folders and can
access them freely from Windows.

I don’t own a Mac but on my two UM machines I must enter the
username and password each time. It offers to remember it permanently but it
will not do so. Is there any way that I can force Linux to remember and not ask
me each time. My disability makes it a very big problem for me.

As for logging onto a Windows share well that is
a whole different story I gather. So I actually have two different issues. I
really appreciate your help with either one.

Robert

Your windows systems are usually in WORKGROUP. It does not matter if the UM
system is called gilda and has a user gilda. User accounts & hostnames are
usually all lowercase. I am not aware of the configuration file you mention
… any ref?

I'm not using a Synology NAS so what I've accomplished in my setup might need a totally different method.

Using a web browser I accessed the control center for the NAS [ip 198.162.1.6 ] where I used the NAS os:

  • create appropriate shares for each user
  • adjust permissions for each share
  • set a backup schedule for NAS contents

Once the above was set to my satisfaction I only need to access to validate operations or modify users or permissions.

The access method for file storage and usage is handled by the client OS. For Ubuntu MATE I've found that CAJA fills the bill perfectly, Windows 7 Explorer works equally well. Provided the correct permissions have been set there's absolutely no problem creating, reading, or deleting any file on the NAS from any of the 5 computers in my home. >Stated in other terms I don't have Windows nor Ubuntu, nor MAC shares on the NAS. The NAS serves the files to which ever platform requests.

a screen capture of my NAS [buffalo on kincaidpeters] using caja

So I have been playing with things and figured out a couple
problems. When um try to log on to Windows network username is the username
that I used on UM, the domain is the Windows workgroup name in capitals and the
password is my UM password. Then when I checked the box that said remember
forever I can login to my Windows public folder with out having to retype every
time. Beautiful. So that the answer to that.

Now when I try to access the UM from Windows and it could
not I checked and it was because the UM firewall was enabled on my home
network. I disabled it and now I can log on to the public folder on UM with no
username or password. Beautiful. So that’s the answer to that.

I have my one UM machine connected with a cat five cable to
my router. When I go to browse the network with UM I can see my NAS box yet I
must log on each time with a username and password. Is there any way to have it
remember my username and password which I believe are referred to as
credentials. Please correct me if I’m wrong on that. When I do finally log on I
see all of my folders no problem. The problem is they don’t want to have to
type my username and password each time. I think you can get around that by
setting up a credentials file somehow on the NAS box and entering that into the
fstab file. I do not understand the exact method is the YouTube tutorial was
rather disjointed and lacked clarity. So that is problem number three.

My last problem is that I have a UM laptop with 32-bit UM 16.04 LTS
which used to be able to see and therefore logon to the NAS box. Now no matter
what I do it can no longer see the NAS box when you go to browse the network.

And lastly none of my UM machines (I have 3) see each other at all when
I go to browse the network. Why would that be?

I appreciate your patience I’m sorry for all the
questions.