Can't see windows shares in Nautilus

Steve50 · 12-30-2006, 04:56 AM

Up until now I've sucessfully used NFS for filesharing on my Linux PCs, but my son's a gamer and he insists on using windows. So I decided to install samba on my PC and set up up file sharing on his windows box. The problem is the shares on the windows box aren't visible from the network icon in nautilus (computer). I can see my computer in the workgroup from the windows box, but the only way I can access the windows box from Linux is by typing smb://<windowsboxIPaddress> Substituting the windows computer name instead of the IP address doesn't work. Any advice appreciated, as I have no experience of using samba.

Steve50 · 12-30-2006, 06:22 AM

OK, making progress. I needed to allow the windows box access through my firewall. I changed the settings and initially I could actually see the windows shares. However, I then came across another problem. I opened swat to make to check the settings, which semed fine, but when I came to restart the services smbd and nmbd refused to start, only winbindd is running. Manually starting and stopping samba doesn't seem to make a difference. This is the output I get when attempting to restart:

debian:/home/steve# /etc/init.d/samba restart
Stopping Samba daemons: nmbd smbdstart-stop-daemon: warning: failed to kill 4665: No such process
.
Starting Samba daemons: nmbd smbd.

Despite the fact it says the daemons are running swat says they're stopped

Steve50 · 12-30-2006, 09:13 AM

Well uninstalling and reinstalling samba solved the last problem. This time I just made some minor changes to the default smb.conf file rather than creating a new file with swat. The outcome: sometimes the workgroup shows up in the nautilus window when I click on the network icon, but most of the time it doesn't. I'm guessing that because I connect to the network through a router (Belkin) I'm having problems with netbios names - because I can connect to the windows shares if I use the IP address rather than the computer name.

Until I solve this one I've created a link on my desktop to the windows share using its IP address, but if anyone knows a way round the netbios issue any advice would be appreciated.

titetanium · 12-30-2006, 11:19 AM

Try editing /etc/hosts and match the computer name with the ip address. You should be able to ping by name once this is done. However, I see you have winbind running which is supposed to solve that problem, but I'm not familiar enough with that tool to give advice on that.

As for the samba daemon getting stuck when trying to restart, it's obvious. One of the smbd daemons is stuck and didn't shutdown properly which gives the error you get. Simple fix: open a terminal window as root and type:

Code:

ps ax | grep smbd
kill -9 `pidof smbd`
/etc/init.d/samba restart

That should solve the stuck samba process and restart it normally without having to reinstall it.

Steve50 · 12-30-2006, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by titetanium

Try editing /etc/hosts and match the computer name with the ip address. You should be able to ping by name once this is done. However, I see you have winbind running which is supposed to solve that problem, but I'm not familiar enough with that tool to give advice on that.

As for the samba daemon getting stuck when trying to restart, it's obvious. One of the smbd daemons is stuck and didn't shutdown properly which gives the error you get. Simple fix: open a terminal window as root and type:

Code:

ps ax | grep smbd
kill -9 `pidof smbd`
/etc/init.d/samba restart

That should solve the stuck samba process and restart it normally without having to reinstall it.

Thanks for the advice. I added an entry to the /etc/hosts file and initially this seemed to solve the problem. However, it still only works intermittently - sometimes I can see the workgroup, and sometimes not. That said, I can always connect if I use the IP address so I suppose it's not a huge problem. Stops me getting me bored anyway, and gives me something else to learn about