Help needed with samba

Support & Help Requests
1

Hi, just reinstalled UM 14.04.2 32 bit on my main machine after messing about too much with previous installation. However, upon re-installation with latest 14.04.2, samba does not appear to be working anymore.

Installed samba GUI and set up my shares in it in the usual manner.

Added line to all samba entries in smb.conf file in etc/samba. The line being "force user = stephen" (where stephen is my user name). All that is usually required, at that point, is a reboot and the shares should be visible/browsable from the network places menu, However, all that is appearing is a windows network icon that requires a password. In other words, the server and all of the shares it contains is not there.

Been on the net looking for solutions, but all they tell me to do is what I have already done. At a loss now and need some further advice.

For completeness, here are the smb.conf entires:

[software]
comment = Software
path = /media/stephen/Store1/software
writeable = yes
; browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
force user = stephen

[Videos-1]
comment = Videos-1
path = /media/stephen/Store1/Videos-1
writeable = yes
; browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
force user = stephen

[Videos-2]
comment = Videos-2
path = /media/stephen/Store2
writeable = yes
; browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
force user = stephen

[Videos-3]
comment = Videos-3
path = /media/stephen/Store3
writeable = yes
; browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
force user = stephen

Also, I should add, since installing 14.04.2, last night, huge number or error messages appearing at login to do with panels, marco and lightdm. I assumed they would diminish as updates took place and, although they have a little, still getting quite a lot of them. Don't know if this is related to my network problem but thought I should mention it

2

I’m sure that you will find everything about Samba here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_school
… and remembering that you are teacher … :wink:

3

I’ve since been doing some more internet digging (including installing and testing several other Ubuntu variants) and it turns out this is a problem across the entire Ubuntu 14.04.2 family of distros. Not just Ubuntu Mate. Which begs the question of why it was working fine on the earlier version of Ubuntu Mate 14.04. Has joining Canonical meant that some of their 14.04.2 infrastructure has been bled into the latest release of Ubuntu Mate 14.04.2 and this is the reason samba is not now working?

4

hmmm, I didn’t have any problems getting Samba to work on my 14.04.2 installation. Under the gui ‘Preferences’ ‘Samba Users’, make sure your username is added. I have never used the force user option either, so not sure about that.
Here is a link that also might help you.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2208624

5

The problem is more fundamental than merely gaining access as a particular user. The shares are not even appearing in my network places. also, that link you have provided confirms what I have said, that this is a problem across all variants of Canonical’s 14.04. I’d already been on there (and elsewhere) and followed advice, to no avail. Hence my initial post here.

6

Also, I have just installed 15.04 as well. Same problem. I should say, I installed 15.04 on my laptop last week and networking worked, though only in terms of accessing my server (whose samba server was still working at the time on 14.04). It is only since reinstalling on my server with 14.04.2 and then also trying Ubuntu Studio 14.04.2 as well as Ubuntu Mate 15.04 and Ubuntu Studio 15.04, that I have found that samba works with none of them.

My network shares on my server are entirely down and I am non the wiser as to why.

7

I am beginning to wonder if I am missing something bleeding obvious here.

8

I have tried every single thing i can think of now, including re installation several times with several different variants and version, several dozen Ubuntu threads of people with exactly the same problem. I had all of these kinds of problems pre-Ubuntu Mate unless i went as far back as Ubuntu 12.04, which is what I was on immediately prior to using Ubuntu Mate 14.04. Even them it was always a bit of a pin in the ■■■■ to setup.

Then came the first iteration of Ubuntu 14.04 and samba just worked!, With the installation of the GUI, it became super easy to set up shares.

And now this.

I have to have network sharing on my home network. It’s a main feature of the machine around my home. Without it, several things do not work.

Is anyone else out there having this problem on 14.04.2 or 15.04 and, if they have experienced problems, how did they fix it?

I fully accept I may have missed something stupidly simple that I should have done, But, I have been with Linux/Ubuntu now since 2007 and I have become pretty well acquainted with the vagaries of Samba in that time. So, I really am stumped with this one,

Please help, if you can.

9

Install gvfs-fuse on the clients?

10

Just reinstalled Ubuntu 12.04, for the hell of it…

Installed Samba and system-config-samba

Worked immediately out of the box

Samba file sharing, at least for me and at least till I find a fix, is broken post 12.04

11

Hi Martin, did that at the client end. Made no difference. The problem, I think, is at the server end, as much as anywhere else. The shares should appear in the server network place menu and they are just not there.

13

Yes, G45, I’ve been on the samba site and I have done everything right as far as I can tell. Still no go. However, thanks nonetheless for the link. As I said, I installed Ubuntu 12.04 this evening and it immediately worked. Anything beyond 12.04, though, and it does not. Which would be okay, in principle, except for the fact that the only version of Mate I can install on Precise is Mate 1.6 and also that alsa sound does not work on my rig with precise installed.

All of these other, post-12.04 installations, I should add, are from fresh downloads of the various Ubuntu Mate distros today. Some of which were working with samba previously. I know this because I have a couple of laptops on which I play around with Ubuntu Mate on a regular basis. Though, I should, add, I have also downloaded several other Ubuntu variants today and they all have the same samba problem…except 12.04

All of which makes me wonder if there has been some recent back-porting of some aspect of samba to all ubuntu distros beyond 12.04 and there is a consequently a problem with all of them vis a vis samba and the reason some folks are not experiencing that problems is because they installed their distros before the back-porting to the installation media took place. This would certainly provide an explanation for why I also did not experience a problem on, say, 14.04 when i installed it numerous times up till around 3 weeks ago. But, since installing yesterday evening, samba no longer works.

Whilst my own experience is accurately recounted here, I do accept my analysis of why that might be the case is entirely conjectural.

Nevertheless, if I remember correctly, the last time samba worked for me on Ubuntu Mate 14.04 was before it became an official flavour of Canonical’s Ubuntu.

14

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

15

What’s the difference between the samba config files on 12.04 and 14.04? Looks like the needed windows configs are not there in the 14.04 config files.

Here is my smb.conf file, running on xubuntu 14.04 and it works fine:

http://hastebin.com/vogifanaxa.hs

If the smb.conf you posted is the complete config, then the [global] section is missing and therefore the shares are not working.

16

No it’s not the complete file. however, thanks for the copy of yours. I’ll try it.

That said, why on earth would the 14.04 one not contain the necessary stuff from the off and why,when shares are made in the GUI, would it not put in correctly in the conf file from the off?

The above is, by and large, what was the case in 12.04.

18

Yes, i do accept that Linux, being open source and largely community led, is always going to be a bit fuzzy round the edges and, for me, that is a price well worth paying as part and parcel of the philosophy of open source. I too, don’t mind having to fiddle around with things a bit as a consequence. It just seems to me, though, that basic network sharing functionality should be more of a priority than it is. In terms of this particular problem with Samba and recent versions of Ubuntu, there are lots of people out there experiencing it as well. I am just sorry I lack the technical expertise to directly contribute to development. As it is, I am just a reasonably competent end user who is, by and large, a grateful one at that,

Anyway, I have been a bit too intemperate in this thread and need to reflect on that.

19

There is one thing that is still puzzling me, though, and that is the fact that on the non Cannonical release of Ubuntu Mate 14.04 Samba was working perfectly, It is only since installing the latest iteration of 14.04.2, that it suddenly will not work, Nor, indeed will any other Ubuntu variant from 15.04 right back to 13. What was it about Whimpy’s version of 14.04 that was different? It strikes me that, logically, he based it on a base of ubuntu 14.04 before some kind of changes were retrospectively made to it by Cannonical. Or, he made specific changes to it to fix Samba when he created the non Cannonical version of Ubuntu Mate. I am just guessing here, of course. But, there must be some logical reason for why it was working out of the box (following installation of samba and samba-config) and now is not.

20

I didn’t knowingly do anything with Samba. So I’m confused too :confused:

22

Strange, because I installed from scratch the UM 14.04.2 iso, installed the samba system-config-samba gui, configured through the gui, and haven’t had any problems at all. I mount an ntfs partition which is located on my hard drive and share it on my home network.

23

Outstanding G45. I’ve been looking for one of the older UM 14 builds on the basis of precisely the same suspicion. Thanks.