I've been reading up on this all day and I can't get anywhere with it. This is a new install of Ubuntu. Only a week old or so. When I run apt-get install samba I get the following output:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
samba : Depends: samba-common (= 2:4.1.6+dfsg-1ubuntu2.14.04.7) but 2:4.1.6+dfsg-1ubuntu2.14.04.8 is to be installed
Depends: samba-common-bin (= 2:4.1.6+dfsg-1ubuntu2.14.04.7) but 2:4.1.6+dfsg-1ubuntu2.14.04.8 is to be installed
Depends: samba-dsdb-modules but it is not going to be installed
Depends: samba-libs (= 2:4.1.6+dfsg-1ubuntu2.14.04.7) but 2:4.1.6+dfsg-1ubuntu2.14.04.8 is to be installed
Recommends: attr
Recommends: samba-vfs-modules but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

If I'm understanding this right, this means I need samba-common 14.04.7 before it can install samba-common 14.04.8 which it is trying to install? ETC. How do I get these older versions if that's what I need to do? I tried switching servers to two others and updated and tried samba install again and got the same error output. I've got all options checked in Software & Updates under Ubuntu Software and under Other software. This error means I'm missing earlier pieces of Samba, correct? I don't understand how to fix this or why it even happened.

Any ideas?

Hi...

Does installing and using "aptitude" in place of "apt-get" help or are you unable to install anything?

Regards...

I think that line the key, as apt normally resolves dependencies.

Try

See man apt-get for more.

aptitude didn't do anything.

apt-get --fix-broken just returned the error that fix-broken isn't a command. Perhaps I typed it wrong? I did issue sudo before it so that's not the reason.

I purged samba-common and samba-libs and samba-common-bin since they were clearly an issue. I then reran apt-get install samba and it worked. however I now have no sharing option when I right click a folder or file. Before if I right clicked on something the context menu had a sharing option but when I tried to use it I got an error and it would fail. The right click share menu I'm referring to is shown here http://www.7tutorials.com/how-access...ders-windows-7

It's now missing. So there must still be something I need to install?

ahh.. I just did whereis nautilus-share and it came back blank.
I fixed that, rebooted and I have the share option in the context menu again. Still haven't tested the sharing part yet but I'm getting somewhere.

EDIT:
Got it. Sharing works. Need to figure out how to secure it with a password though. I tested it with guest access on and I can reach it fine. When I turn guest access off it prompts for credentials. I enter linuxcomputername\myusername and my linux logon passowrd but I get access denied. I'm going to assume that Samba requires a different password setup rather than just using the logon credentials to the computer itself. I'll read up on that and figure out. I can mark this one as solved though. If anyone else comes through with the exact same samba error I had this is what I did:

sudo apt-get purge samba-common
sudo apt-get purge samba-libs

I then rebooted and redid apt-get install samba

It was here that I realized the issue I now had with nautilus.
sudo apt-get install nautilus-share

Everything is golden now. Hope this helps any future fellow new users.

1 members found this post helpful.

Cool, I'm glad you got it working. Thanks for sharing what worked for you.

Regards...