At work I've been using Fedora Core 1, and need to access some Windows (Win2k AD domain) file shares. I can see them, but can't look inside to get at the files that I need. Windows authentication is required, as only certain users are allowed access. So, having FC1 also installed at home, and a Win2k box on my home network, I decided to experiment. If I can get this to work at home, perhaps I can also at work.

I made 2 shares on the Windows box: one accessible only to certain users, the other with "everyone full control" settings.

I started with Smb4k, which is, IIRC, basically a nice front-end for smbclient. attempting to access a share, I entered a valid username/password and just got continual prompts to re-enter the same. Ok, I set up the Lisa daemon and tried Konqueror with lan:/. Saw the Windows PC, drilled down and got a folder entitled "SMB". Tried that, got an authentication prompt. Enter password with username, then workgroupname\username, no luck. Try workgroupname/username, with a correct password. Got a Konqueror graphical error message

"Internal Error
Please send a full bug report at http://bugs.kde.org
Unknown error condition in stat: Network is unreachable"

Next I tried Nautilus. Tried smb://winhostname, get prompted for a username and password. Then get an error message that I don't have the necessary permissions to view the contents of “smb://winhostname”. Try smb://winhostname/sharename for the ”everyonefullcontrol” share and got the same message.

Next I tried the same thing with Nautilus, this time giving the username and password for the admin account on the Windows box. This time I can see the shares, but if I try to drill down and see what's inside the folder limited to specific users I get another message about not having permissions to view the contents of the share. I can, however view the contents of the share with “everyone full controll”.

Next I tried mounting a share in the form suggested by the smbmount help message: mount -t smbfs -o username=tridge,password=foobar //fjall/test /

As root I cannot mount a share giving the uname/password of a regular user--I get "14100: session setup failed: ERRDOS - ERRnoaccess (Access denied.) SMB connection failed". With the uname/password of the Windows admin account it does mount. However, if I try to list the share contents with "ls" I get "Permission denied'.

I've also tried booting to a recent Knoppix version with no joy (in case this was Fedora specific). On another occasion I tried creating a uid/password combo on the Linux box the same as on Win2k--no help. Maybe, though, this is an issue with newer Samba versions? Doing "smbclient --version" I get back "Version 3.0.2-7.FC1". I'm thinking that I did once mount a Windows share with RH9--but perhaps my recollection is in error. Surely I'm not the only one having this problem, but I've Googled and searched this site with no help found.

Ok, if you've read all this, any suggestions? Is anyone able to mount Windows shares with FC 1 or a distro with a newer Samba version?

have you enabled "password encryption" for samba? this is a requirement as windows hosts encrypt passwords by default!

i`m asking because you didn`t mention whether you have encryption enabled or not.


pir187

Thanks for the response, pir187.

I'm trying to do the opposite of what most try to do with Samba, so assumed that I only had to be concerned with Samba client applications, not the server side, but some of the docs seem to imply that perhaps smbclient does use /etc/samba/smb.conf. Anyway, now at work, I did edit smb.conf, added my domain and uncommented the "encrypt password..." and "smb passwd..." lines. After that, did the following:

created a uid on Linux the same as on Windows
cat /etc/passwd|grep username|mksmbpasswd.sh > /etc/samba/smbpasswd
chmod 600 /etc/samba/smbpasswd
smbpasswd username (and enter the password)
Then I started the smb service.

Pretty much the same results that I've listed above, but I found something that works to connect to a share and also browse to a lower directory within that share:

smbclient //servername/sharename$ -U=domain/username ... then enter the password when prompted.

This puts me in an ftp-like interface and I can cd where I want, get files etc. Not elegant, but workable.

However, I've since stopped samba and even renamed the /etc/samba/passwd file and it still works. The same syntax as per the above works at home (did it remotely to test), but only for the admin user. Note the "$" at the end...the shares I access at work are setup as admin shares (to make them invisible I guess), so maybe that's the common denominator.

Anyway, I have a solution that is workable, though not optimal.

However, I'd still like to understand the reasons for this if anyone has an explanation.