Fedora runs my main fileserver. On Friday I upgraded to Core 7. There were some snags along the way, but eventually (with help from folks here) I got it running.

However, following the upgrade, the other machines on the network can't see this one (which they did fine before). It can see them, however.

The Fedora machine can't see itself in the Samba screen either - but displays perfectly happily the others on the network.

If I manually change the samba address in konqueror to smb://fedora-vin then it can see itself. It still doesn't appear in the network list under Keithj.

I'll post my smb.conf below this (I'm using the laptop while I poke at the server).

Can anyone suggest what's up?

This is the smb.conf file that goes with the above:

Try disabling SELinux temporarily with

setenforce 0

from the terminal and see if that fixes things. If it does, you can diable SELinux for smb from the security settings in gnome

Also, have you opened the firewall for ports 137-139?

If the other hosts are XP computers, they may be using port 445 for browsing.
grep ' 445/' /etc/services
microsoft-ds 445/tcp # Microsoft-DS
microsoft-ds 445/udp # Microsoft-DS

Also, do the other hosts use "Keithj" as the workgroup name?

You can get away without port 445 I believe (I keep mine closed) since you get quite a bit of notification traffic flying around

Thanks for those...

SELinux is supposed not to be running anyway - setenforce 0 brings the response bash: setenforce: command not found

There's no firewall on the machine - it's behind the server firewall, where the only machines that can access it are the ones that should (but can't, right now).

grep ' 445/' /etc/services
brings up an error message etc/services: No such file or directory.

microsoft-ds 445/tcp # Microsoft-DS gets "command not found".


I've just installed smb4k and will have a play with that tomorrow.

Yes, Keithj is the network name all the machines use. The Fedora one can see the others on there and access them with no problem. They can't see it.

If I reboot to Mepis or Debian, all works fine. The smb.conf files are virtually identical, which is what baffles me.

The /etc/services file is a text config file that is a table of port number & internet service names. On FC6 at least it is provided by the "setup" rpm package. It is used by xinetd and maybe the libwrap library. You should try fixing that. I don't know if it is provided by a different package in FC7 however but it may be essential that you have this file. For example, you have to add an entry for swat in this file and edit /etc/xinetd.d/swat before using the web based swat interface.

If this server is on all the time you could enable wins in your samba config. Then use the server's IP address as the wins entry on the other hosts. This can prevent netbios udp floods.

This url explains the types of browsing used in windows.
http://www.petri.co.il/what's_port_445_in_w2k_xp_2003.htm

The samba 3 Howto and Reference also has a chapter on browsing. See the /usr/share/doc/samba-<version>/Samba3-HOWTO.pdf file. The pdf files here are the same books you can purchase at Barnes & Nobels.

Are the other computers Linux or Windows? I have found Windows XP SP1 machines have trouble seeing Linux computers and also Windows SP2 computers on a workgroup.

I have none of those files. KSysGuard tells me that selinux and xinetd aren't running. smbd is running, nmbd is not.

Sounds like a workaround - really, I'd like to get Samba working correctly.

I don't think the problem is with the Windows machines, because they can see the Samba connection from the other distros on the server. The only problem is that the other distros can't access the SCSI drives successfully. Fedora was "perfect" till I upgraded; now I have several "stopper" bugs, of which this one is the killer.


Thanks - I'll have a read of that when I get back in later today,

Well, after a couple of hours reading the PDF, which was most interesting but mostly unhelpful, I found the solution. The two lines under [global] reading:

guest ok = yes
guest account = keithj

which were correct with the previous version and with Mepis, Debian and SuSe, should now read

guest ok = no

The line
guest ok = yes
under the individual folders remains.

So easy! Why it's changed, if it's really changed, I don't know.

I got some very interesting error messages along the way - for example, very few of the commands, such as 'smbd', will run in a root command window.
[root@Keithj]# smbd
returns the message
bash: smbd: command not found

However, /usr/sbin/smbd works fine. I suspect Fedora 7 has done away with the "PATH" variable. Or mine has.

My fileserver is back! Phew!

Now, when spare time appears again, I'll look into why icons for running software don't appear in the taskbar (Skype, and many more background tasks of that nature). A different thread, though.