Troubleshooting Windows shares (samba)

Troubleshooting Windows shares (samba)

On your Windows machines, use DHCP

This may sound weird, but it solves quite a bit of issues. If you wish to have static addresses, 1 way of doing it is if your router supports static DHCP. This way your PCs/devices will get assigned always the same IP on every dhcp request

Check your file permissions on the samba share

Using shell access, go to the directory that's shared, and list its permissions

• • Add discussion about which file perms are recommended and how to change them.

Windows Vista

A samba "bug" has been fixed in samba v3.0.22 . Upgrade to that version for full Windows share support

Try adding guest access

While you may want security w/ user/passwords on your shares, enabling guest access is another way of troubleshooting if you can make it work.

1. Pick a directory you wish to share ie: /mnt/share and change the access permissions to make it world readable.

chmod 777 /mnt/share

2. Make sure that the workgroup you use is the same that your windows computers use:

• Defined in Windows ;ControlPanel:Network:Identification_Tab:Workgroup_field
• For a workgroup MSHOME this line should appear in /etc/smb.conf

[global]
 guest account = pcguest
 workgroup = MSHOME

3. Add the [share] section to /etc/smb.conf as shown below in a small but complete config file. This will create a free to all directory.

/etc/smb.conf

[global]
 guest account = pcguest
 workgroup = MSHOME

[share]
 comment = LinkStation Share
 path = /mnt/share
 read only = no 
 public = yes

4. Restart Samba on the Linkstation with this command:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb restart

5. In Windows Explorer, doubleclick on Network Neighborhood, then on Entire Network, then on your workgroup (MSHOME in the case), and see if you see your LinkStation
6. Doubleclick the icon to see the share directory.
7. Navigate to the share directory.