Hello everyone

I'm fairly new to Linux and looking for a bit of hep or advice, I have a low spec pc running Peppermint that I control through remote desktop, I'm trying to access a freenas server and other shres on my network I couldn't see a network browser in the file manager so i installed the SMB4K browser but I cannot mount any shares on the network at all, when I try to mount a share I get the error message "mount.cifs: permission denied: no match for /home/emegra2/smb4k/FREENAS/Serverdrive 1 found in /etc/fstab" if I enable both settings in the superuser tab and try to mount a share I get the error "mount error: could not resolve address for FREENAS: Name or service not known", can anyone give me some idea what may be wrong and how I might fix this, any help would be greatly appreciated


Many Thanks
Graeme

The second error looks like you are simply trying to connect using the wrong service. Do you know what the specific file sharing service your freenas server uses? From what I can find, it sould be set up with cifs (Samba), nfs, or rsync. I can't ween my wife off of Windows, so I end up using samba for my sharing. To connect, I simply type smb:/"other-computer's-IP-address" into the address bar of the file manager and connect. Once I'm at the "root" of her share, navigation is much like any other file manager. This will only work if your network computers have static IP addresses, or you manually verify the IP of the other computer whenever you want to connect. I'm sure there are better ways, but this is what works for me.

Hi Purevw

Thanks for your reply, I've been working late so I haven't had a chance to try what you suggest but I will over the next few days and let you know how I get on.

Many Thanks

Graeme

Yes, I confirm that the hostnames have proved flaky/useless in samba, so it's static IP addresses. If you have the samba suite off applications, should be easy to get if you haven't, Try putting a line in fstab something like
Then you can type in, from terminal and in your home directory, I never used peppermint, but in Debian/Ubuntu-like systems you could automate it somewhat by try putting an alias line in .bashrc. For me, mounting without using the menus (which, in the end, are only a wrapper for a simple command like the above) is far better.

If you still get permission problems, maybe mount as superuser or root. As you know, extra care required if you do that.

Hi purevw & Sonic I uninstalled smb4k and installed pyNeighborhood and that seems to have sorted it out although it tells me there is an error each time I mount a share it still mounts the shares ok and lists them in a folder named pyNeighborhood in my home folder so I'm happy with that meantime but thank you both for your help and advice it's much appreciated


Many Thanks

Graeme

Run "smbclient -L <hostname>" or "smbclient -L <IP_address>" and see if the shares are visible. You may be blocking the udp ports in your firewall.

If the NAS runs avahi, try using HOSTNAME.local instead. This is known as zeroconf in Windows, and Rendevous in MAC. The hosts: entry in the /etc/nsswitch file may contain an mdns4_minimal or mdns4 entry, which is the protocol that avahi uses.

I configured my Cable/DNS router to configure the same IP address (based on MAC addresss) to all my computers & devices. This allows me to edit the /etc/hosts files on my computers, and not have to worry about the IP address changing. Doing this, I can still use DHCP yet have the advantage of fixed addresses.

Boy, does this ring a bell! It took me weeks, literally, to get Samba working like it should, but it's been a while and I can't remember all of what I did. Eventually, the Linux machine was able to map the drives so I could access them, but I had to do a LOT of searches, asking questions etc. I hope that if I ever need to use it again, Samba will become a lot easier to use and set up. My main Windows machine bit the dust when we had a power surge during a BAD storm, fried the power supply and two NICs. At the time, I had the Win machine getting the internet connection, and it had no problem serving that up to Linux, but I fought for quite some time to get Samba working. It's definitely not for beginners or even those with a little experience, but it DID work finally.

Good luck!

Hi jschiwal
Thanks for your help I did as you said and ran smbclient <ip address> and this is what came up "Domain=[MSHOME] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.5.6]
Server requested LANMAN password (share-level security) but 'client lanman auth' is disabled
tree connect failed: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED" I dont have a clue what any of this means or what it's telling me I would appreciate if maybe you could explain what it means in as simplistic terms as possible I am very new to Linux and not particularly familiar with computer language.

Many Thanks

Graeme

[QUOTE=gwmorris;4515004]Boy, does this ring a bell! It took me weeks, literally, to get Samba working like it should, but it's been a while and I can't remember all of what I did. Eventually, the Linux machine was able to map the drives so I could access them, but I had to do a LOT of searches, asking questions etc. I hope that if I ever need to use it again, Samba will become a lot easier to use and set up. My main Windows machine bit the dust when we had a power surge during a BAD storm, fried the power supply and two NICs. At the time, I had the Win machine getting the internet connection, and it had no problem serving that up to Linux, but I fought for quite some time to get Samba working. It's definitely not for beginners or even those with a little experience, but it DID work finally.

Hi gwmorris
Thanks for your comments it's sadly comforting to know I'm not the only one to have this problem, I always feel that when I have a problem like this that I'm missing something that's obvious to everyone else, The odd thing to me is that I have 2 pc's running Linux (one Ubuntu and the other Peppermint) both on the same lan and the Ubuntu pc finds and mounts the shares no problem without any intervention from me but I think you're right in saying it's not for beginners, I'm new to Linux altogether and to be honest I'm finding so many things that's simple in windows hard work but the problem is probably more due my lack of knowledge and understanding than Linux itself.

Many Thanks

Graeme

By default, Samba now no longer supports the old and insecure LANMAN password hashing mechanism.
This mechanism may be required for older systems and network devices such as your NAS server.
To enable the LANMAN hash mechanism, reverse the settings in smb.conf listed here. http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/security/howto/no_lanman.html

You may need to delete and regenerate your Samba users entries using the pdbedit tool, so that the LANMAN hashes are added to the Samba password backend.

Remember that you will need to stop and restart Samba to give effect to the changes.

To avoid typing the IP addresses of your own machines, you can add them to the "hosts" file (usually in /etc) with the name of the machine. You can then use the name and Linux will get the IP from "hosts." This assumes you can assign static IP addresses--I do that in my router that runs the DHCP server.

[QUOTE=Emegra;4515240]Yeah, you'll get the hang of it easy enough. I've been learning for at least 10 years and don't really feel a lot closer to being any kind of master! I think the best things I ever did was (definitely #1) learning as much of BASH or SH or whatever, that opened up a few more useful commands and allowed me to start scripting a little. If you can master a few BASH scripts, you're well on your way to an enjoyable and easy-to-configure system (or two). You might prefer the KSH, or "Korn shell" that is fairly BASH-compatible, but is a bit different if you're not used to it. I just use BASH since so many scripts are in it and all the people who like it can't be too wrong!

Another thing I did which I think helped a lot, was to learn a little Emacs (not an easy program if you don't know it already) and a little more vim. Vim is one of those editors that can get the job done quickly, and it has WAY more features than I'll probably use, I just find it simpler than Emacs for text editing. Both, by the way, have nearly-equivalent versions for the GUI, as they were originally used mostly at the command line. Emacs has evolved to the point where you can use it practically all the time if you care to, taking care of all kinds of detail, especially for programmers.

That's another thing, the multitude of programming and mostly script-type languages that Linux uses. As I said, BASH is pretty much a must, and for all of it's downfalls it's not too hard to learn if you take it slow and make sure you understand WHY it works and not just HOW. Perl is popular among many Linux users, it's just a little too much to take on first thing. Python is somewhat tamer and very powerful as well. It surprised me when I first saw what it can do! Then you have the utility-type of scripting like "awk" (or "gawk"), helps a lot with text data. Then there's "sed", which is kind of a line editor that can also do a multitude of things, but is a you-know-what to learn.

If you have a permanent internet connection, try links or lynx (I happen to like lynx better, but they both work fine), they are text-only command-line versions of web browsers, and it's possible you may actually need one of them someday. Aside from all that, it's a good start into the land of Linux. I wish you well, and hope that you can find the time to learn more about it. Personally, I found it fascinating just because of the wide array of scripting and programming languages that come with it.

Later.