Samba not working in 16.04

Support & Help Requests
#1

I have installed caja share. But it does not appear in any menu that I can find, so am assuming it is not working. Installed system-config-samba. But, it refused to even open. Found out a fix by typing the following in a terminal:

sudo touch /etc/libuser.conf

The above got the GUI to open and so I made a samba share. But, following this, after going to network and trying to open the folder, it refused to open

Following which, I did my usual trick, when this happens (and it used to happen a LOT in linux) and went into samba.conf and added the following line at the bottom of a given samba entry:

force user = stephen

Thus:

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

Still no go. I also got this pop up:

So, Samba not working and no idea why. Anybody any ideas? Lack of network functionality used to be a MAJOR pain in Linux, but I thought this had finally been put to bed. It seems not. I know this is not a UM issue, but is a broader Ubuntu/Debian one. But, it really is not good enough having flaky network functionality in this day and age.

#2

Click on connect as user, enter your ubuntu id and pw and click Remember forever. You should be able to see your shares. There are many issues with samba since April 12th, there are bugs tracks. samba --version should give you either 4.3.8 or 4.3.9 HTH

#3

I know this works on my own machine if I put in my own user password. But, I need guests on other devices elsewhere in the house, when I am not present, to be able to access these shares as guests without having to use a password and certainly without having to use my password.

#4

Here’s a bug track to read … https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/samba/+bug/1572876

My win7 share does not have a pw (it is just a folder c:\public, enable sharing, allow everyone RW) but for some reason samba needs my ubuntu pw and it pops up that annoying window. For the time being, it works.

#5

This should fix the password problem. But I guess you’ll have to issue them passwords. I haven’t had any luck bypassing the password issue, as it’s only me using it I haven’t tried very hard.

sudo  smbpasswd -a username