Problem if sharename is greater than 12 characters
 

Hi,

I am using Slackware 10.0 I am on a lan that has both windows as well as linux boxes. When a windows XP user shares a folder over the network and the share name is greater than 12 characters, he gets a warning that since the sharename is greater than 12 characters, some other computers running Windoze Me, 2000, etc might have some problems.
The problem is that those shares are not visible under linux. I type smb://i.p. and get all shares except those (sometimes it even asks for passwords). What I want to say is that if a shared winows folder has a name of greater than 12 characters I cannot access it while people using windows XP have no problems at all.

Is there some way to fix this?
Thanks in anticipation

I think there is an informal rule that share names should not exceed 12 characters for this very reason. The way to fix it is reduce the length of the share names to 12 characters or less. I know that can be a pain. I have faith, though. You can do it. Be courageous, and don't take no for an answer.

I don't know a way around it other than reduce the length of your shares. You should still be able to manually connect to the shares even if they are over 12 characters in length, so you could set a script to mount these, it's just browsing and listing shares over characters that creates problems I think.

Okay, let me make this clear. I personally have no problems with sharenames less than 12 characters. When I ask somebody (on XP) to share stuff for me, I tell him in advance to keep the share name less than 12 characters.

Fouldsy, could you elaborate as to how I could manually connect to those shares. I think the problem is with smbclient itself. I tried listing the shares with smbclient -L \\\\<i.p. address> and got all shares except those having names greater than 12 characters.

As I told already, I am on a lan that has both linux and windows(mostly XP) boxes. When people get new stuff they usually share it over the lan so that others can copy it. Suppose somebody gets two movies Shutter and The Shawshank Redemption he names them instinctively by their names and shares them over the network. I while browsing through the network get Shutter but have no idea about The Shawshank Redemption. Okay, one might say that eventually, after some days, I may get the movie, but isn't this a sort of an inherent disadvantage? I have already asked people I know to keep the sharename less than 12 characters whenver they share suff, but I don't know everybody and also not everybody would do it coz I said so.

Did I just notice a bit of sarcasm from somewhere? I don't think that would help anyone.


Okay, I think I've blabbered too much..... The jist of the matter is that, is there a workaround to this or am I doing something stupid.
Thanks in anticipation.