Problems with connecting to Windows 7 Share via smbclient
 

I'll start from the beginning, as there may be a far simpler fix through a different method.

I am trying to allow my mother's Acer Aspire One (OS: Linpus Linnux Lite) to print on the WIFI Canon Pixma MP620 printer. The rest of the computers connected in the house run some variant of Windows. The printer has been set up to print wirelessly from the Windows computer.

Having searched the internet for hours, I have determined that there aren't any drivers for that particular printer.

My potential solutions are:
1. Buy a new printer
2. Install Windows on the Aspire One (Last resort!)
3. Use this piece of software (http://www.printeranywhere.com/), which is installed on my Windows 7 computer which is on 90% of the time, and find some way to install it on Linux. (I tried Wine, and it opened up the installation .exe but when it came to actually installing, returned an error saying it needed to be installed on the same drive. :S)
4. Follow this tutorial (http://justin.yackoski.name/winp/) to print via my computer.

I think I will manage to follow the tutorial fine (as a complete Linux novice!), but I am having some problem with simply connecting to my Windows share folder, which I came across on this line of the tutorial:

After I enter the pasword, as prompted, is returns:

When I try: "smbclient -L //WILL-PC -U Will", and then enter my password as prompted, it returns the same error.

However if I try: "smbclient -L //WILL-PC -N", it returns:

If you need any more information then let me know and please give me instructions on where to find it! I am absolutely desperate on this one - it is rare for google to not provide the answers to any problem!

Sounds as though you might have a problem authenticating to the W7 machine. W7 defaults have changed from the XP ones. These are my registry notes on the subject, maybe they will help you:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
"LmCompatibilityLevel"=dword:1 -allow older Lan manager style messages
"NoLmHash"=dword:0 -store the older, less secure Lan Manager encrypted password

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Netlogon\Parameters
"AllowNT4Crypto"=dword:1 -allow less secure encrypted passwords (intermediate keys must be created)

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
"RequireSecuritySignature"=dword:0 -don't require new message signatures

Thanks very much for your reply, I have implemented the registry notes that you suggested, but it has made no change.

Does anybody else have a suggestion? I have been working on this problem for hours and it is very frustrating!

I'm not optimistic. The approach taken in the tutorial is quite complicated and was probably done prior to Windows 7.

I assume you have file and printer sharing turned on on your Windows 7 computer?

If you want to pursue this, I'd first focus strictly on getting file sharing to work with the Windows 7 machine, then work on printing.

There are apparently Linux drivers for this printer:

http://www.michael-krueger.org/2009/...p620-with.html

Wow - I googled for SO long, thank you! I will report back, but hopefully I should be able to get it working now, and without screwing around as well!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp610linux/files/

This link has tarballs of the drivers, rather than the .debs referenced in the article I linked above. I don't know much about the Linux on the Acer machine or what package management it uses, if any, but there should be a lot of resources on line. I think a lot of people have dumped what came installed on the Acer and installed other Linux distros.

Let us know how it goes.

Ok I feel like I am ready to throw this precious little laptop OUT THE WINDOW!

I can understand the instructions on that page fine, I am simply struggling to move the "PPD file for the MP620 printer" from the location I have downloaded it to (Documents), to the location it needs to be (/usr/share/cups/model/).

I can access root in Terminal, but I can't access anything higher than my User folder in File Manager.

In my fiddling about with the laptop earlier, I used a program that began with a 'K', which allowed be to browse files, the web, and network locations. I can't remember what this was, so I'm completely stuck.

Linux feels nice, and I am all for open source software, maybe in the future I will move from Windows to Linux, but boy is it a steep learning curve!

EDIT: I started writing this post before you replied. I'll have a look at what you suggested and then report back again. Although it wuold be helpful knowing how to do what I asked in the post. Thanks for all your help, it is greatly greatly appreciated!

EDIT 2: I already installed the two files listed, although I picked the .rpms by accident instead of the .debs, and they installed through a wizard.

Samba have nothing to do with printing. To be able to print in linux you need CUPS (common unix printing system) installed (you can check for CUPS daemon running with ps -e | grep cupsd). With CUPS installed you could connect with your browser to localhost:631 and you'll be able to install your printer.
You can install printer driver from CUPS configure page, when installing printer. To copy files from terminal use cp command (read man cp first).

Argh, for some reason the post I typed out wasn't posted. This is NOT my day! To sum up what it said:
I know Samba has nothing to do with printing, I was using it as a workaround because I didn't realise a driver existed for the Canon Pixma MP620 on Linux.
Cups is intstalled and the daemon is running, but localhost:631 returns a 404 error. This is different to the error I get if I simply type in a bogus website address, so there's something going on at localhost:631, but whatever it is, it's returning the 404.

I know to use cp and mv to copy and move within terminal. The problem is that the file manager wont show me access from the root, and I have no idea of the full location of the section that the file manager shows. Linux Lite appears to not only attempt to make the complete computer novice's life easier, but to make a relatively experienced computer user's job a lot harder!

I appreciate your help, please be patient with me! I am dreaming of the day that this gets resolved! :P

Well, if they've removed cups configuration page (it's crappy thing, but rather popular on user-friendly distributions), then there should be some configuration program, you should search for it.
You can find Documents directory (and any other likewise) in your home directory with find ~/ -type d -name 'Documents' command.

I tried that search you suggested, and it returned the wrong Documents folder within a wine installation.

Back in the File Manager, I went to the folder within the documents that I am actually trying to access, and renamed it 'folder123'.

When I try: "find ~/ -type d -name 'folder123'" in terminal, it doesn't return anything, not even any error message.

---

I have found out through various fiddling that the owner of the root is 'root', and the owner of the accessible portion is "user".

The root has "Read and Write" for user:'root', but "Read Only" for any others. These settings were greyed out and unusable.

The accessible portion, which I'll refer to as 'home', has owner:'user', and "Read and Write" for all.

So I either need to somehow access the system as 'root', and either do all my changes from 'root', or change the permissions as 'root' and then carry on again as 'user'.

Any ideas?

Yes, it's a steep learning curve! I started with Linux in 1996 and I'm still learning new things every day. It's worth the effort though. I use the command line exclusively though, so can't help much with your access problems through file manager. You'll probably find that there is a separate link to "File Manager (root mode)" or similar hidden in the menus somewhere. Alternatively you could open a terminal window and use 'su -' to get root access when you need it. If you're running cupsd you should be able to access 'http://localhost:631' and see the cups home screen. If you can't you either have a configuration problem or maybe a firewall rule blocking it. Once you have access you can see what printers are installed and also print a test. Of course, you could also do this from the command line!

It doesn't want to let me access the "Home" area from root access in the terminal, which doesn't really make sense!

Any other help on this? It seems it's not as simple an issue as I thought it might be!

No, you're right that doesn't make sense. Check that you are actually the root user with the whoami command. It should say 'root' (!) The root user has access to everything.

# whoami
root

Unless linpus does something strange that I'm not aware of. I've never used it.