Setting up Samba SOHO

[Frank616]

OK, I've spent parts of the last three days, and over four hours today combing this forum trying to find out how to set up Samba. My brain is tired, and I just CAN'T get this thing working. :(

I've been using Xandros for the past 5 years, and it came preconfigured. Just give your machine a name in the KDE control center, turn on sharing, set the share level, and you're done.

I'm using KDE on F8, so the tools are there.

I have a small home network behind a hardware firewall. Security is less of an issue for me. I want to share selected folders on several of my machines publicly to any user on my network accessible read/write without password. Most of my machines are Linux, one is Win2K.

Using Konqueror, my F8 box can see, access, copy, modify shared files on all the other machines on my network. The other machines on the network can see the F8 box (vostro) and can see one shared folder (download). However, trying to access that folder yields:

'\\Vostro\Download': Server error: Share not found

I have the firewall disabled. I have SELinux disabled. I have smb and nmb services running.

Menu | Settings | Samba (the KDE applet) in the base settings shows:

Workgroup : home
NetBIOS name: VOSTRO
Server String: Vostro

Security level is set at 'share'

The shares tab shows two entries:

Download - /home/frank/Download - shareddirectory (description I gave it)

and then after that there are three symbols: a globe, a pencil and a KDE gear.

The second line just shows 'homes' under the Name column, no path, "Home Directories" under the comments column, and a globe and a pencil in the last colum under 'Properties'. No home directories appear when trying to browse the Vostro machine on the network from any of the other machines.

So, I don't know where to go anymore. There are SO MANY different tools, and none of them seems to do the job. I've found threads that show how to connect your laptop to a company network, and all the security that goes with that, but this is way overkill for me, and I couldn't make it work anyway.

I tried using the Menu | Settings | Samba (system-config-samba) as well. This appears to be another tool that does the same thing as the KDE Samba config applet. On the opening screen of system-config-samba it shows:

Directory: /home/frank/Download
Share name: Download
Permissions: Read/Write
Visibilty: Visible
Description: shareddirectory

By all rights, things seem to be in place! What am I missing? There has to be a misconfiguation in the Samba server on the F8 box somewhere.

I'm just about ready to break down and cry (well, slight exaggeration. Maybe I'll choke something instead). This should not be this difficult.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide. If I get it working, I will write up a how-to for the benefit of others.

Thanks.

Frank.

[bbfuller]

Hello Frank616

I think you have come up against something pre-compiled in the Fedora versions of Samba and that is, that you can't make anything available in your home area to another user on the network.

I've tried several times and failed. I've come across others on the forum who are trying to do that and have never seen a resolution to the problem.

Like you, I've done it on other distributions.

You'll find whether your methodology is correct if you make a share directly off /

When I do that I have no trouble sharing across as many users as I want. I confess never to having tried it with groups though.

I'll be watching this thread though. If you come across the magic switch to enable this I'll be very interested.

[scottro]

I put up a page recently (as there's so many posts about samba problems.)
http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/rhsamba.html

See if any of those solutions help.

[Frank616]

bbfuller:

That is not good news. This is a deal-breaker. If I can't get Samba running "like momma used to make" then I'm going to have to start shopping again for another distro. I took 11 days off to find a new distro and get it set up to the point that I could use it, and 5 of them are gone already.

No, not good. :(



scottro:

Thanks for the link. Yes, there ARE many posts here about Samba problems, and I really felt bad posting yet another one, but I was desperate. I think I have covered most of the items in your list already (firewall off, selinux off, having smb and nmb running). The only thing I don't get is the Windows username and password. At present, with my Xandros boxes, this is not an issue. There IS NO PASSWORD required if that is unckecked in the KDE Network sharing setup utility. Therefore, there has to be some way to turn password checking / challenging off. There also has to be some way of turning off the need for the remote user to need an account on the local box. My present setup does not require this.

Thanks for adding your comment, though, and for going through the trouble of putting up your 'how-to'.

Frank.

[Frank616]

Just a thought: Is there a difference in a Samba peer to peer network compared to a client/server setup? My understanding is that I am running peer to peer on my Xandros / Windows Samba network at the moment.

Frank.

[scottro]

The way I've done what you wish in the past was to have the samba box authenticating off of anNIS server. I doubt you want to go that route.

Did you check the permissions on the Download directory? Could they possibly be restricting things?

Now, what's amusing is that googling this shows me a thread on Ubuntu

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4001686. Note the 3rd paragraph of the third post.

I have a Fedora server running samba, I have had this for several years and been using winXP to connect to my shares without any trouble in shared mode without user auth.

Ok, so we're all missing something. :)

Another link that seems as if it might be helpful

http://linux.unimelb.edu.au/server/course/fc2/samba.html

Do you still have the Xandros stuff there? If so, and you can copy its smb.conf to the Fedora box, or vice versa, do a diff between the two. For instance, copy the Xandros smb.conf and call it xand.conf. Then copy the Fedora one and call the copy fed.conf. Then do

diff xand.conf fed.conf

Less than signs < in front will mean something in Xandros that isn't in Fedora and > will mean it's a line in the Fedora one that wasn't in Xandros.

This assumes that you like the rest of Fedora enough to troubleshoot this. If not, we will understand, it can be an aggravating distribution. :) However, if so, (that is, if you do want to continue troubleshooting it) I now have faith that it can be done.

[bbfuller]

As I said, there are distributions that will do exactly what Frank616 wants. That is share part of his "home" area. I am pretty sure that Ubuntu is one of them.

Fedora is one where you can set up whatever share you like as long as it is constructed off / and share that to whoever you like.

So for example to the users bernard and bbfuller I could make a share available:

/data

but if I made it like this:

/home/bbfuller/data

then I would only be able to share that across the network to the user bbfuller.

I'm not even sure that would work for passwordless logins, it's never occurred to me to try.

[Frank616]

Scottro:

I left Xandros several months ago when they signed with MS. I've been looking for a place to land ever since. Tried Ubutuntu, but it is 'half baked' and I disagree with the 'no root' philosophy. Same story with Linspire. Tried SuSE, but just didn't like it (9.2, 10.0, 10.1). Too many things had to be played with, and Novell signed before Xandros did. Tried PCLinuxOS, but it is too far behind the curve the moment, and didn't like my hardware. No sound, wrong video, no keyboard adjusting of backlight intensity on this laptop, weird mouse during install. Just didn't inspire any confidence. I never even tried Samba on it as too much was broken to go any further.

F8 is slick, and it worked out of the box. Wireless, correct screen resolution, backlight adjusts with 'hot' keys, sound -- it all worked first time. Very impressive.

However, I'm not a Linux guru, and probably never will be. I'm too old, too tired, and too busy with life. I'm going to drop the Xandros 4 CD into this laptop and see if this 18 month-old distribution will work with this brand-new hardware. Then I'll be faced with yet another decision. :(

Thanks for your help. I may be back to try your ideas on the samba config files.

Frank.

[scottro]

I'm with bbfuller on this--I really don't want anyone in my /home directory. I would move the downloads directory off of / and then you could probably change its permissions.

I think what you want to check in /etc/smb.conf is the listing there. (This is why I dislike GUI thingies, they change between various systems, and you're never really sure what you have.)

Also, the results of ls -ld /home/frank
And
ls -ld /home/frank/Downloads

As you say, there are a variety of tools that do different things. However, the most basic one and the one that will be most consistent across distributions is the regular text configuration file, smb.conf.

[scottro]

Oops, I guess you were writing as I was, so I didn't see your post.

Firstly, I can understand your frustration. Try it with Xandros and if it works, that's fine. If not, you're always welcome back.

Fedora is tricky to categorize. Sometimes, everything works OOTB (out of the box) but in general, I'd say it's still for people who find the computer to be their end, rather than simply a means to do their work. As disenchantment with MS and Apple grows, more and more people come to Linux not because they're into playing with Unixlike stuff but simply because they'd rather avoid using Windows.

This is fine and several distributions attempt to fill that need. Another possibility is SimplyMepis, though it might also do the sudo no root thingie, I haven't used it in awhile.

Sorry we can't be of more help, but again, if you want to try again, we'll be here. :)

[Frank616]

Scottro:

>Did you check the permissions on the Download directory? Could they possibly be restricting things?<

No, I didn't check, but maybe should have. I may yet go back and do that. In the meantime I blew F8 off the disk and tried installing Xandros 4. It installed, and had a driver for the 1920 x 1200 screen on this laptop, but it is so slow that moving windows around is almost impossible, and scrolling is glacial. I could try the nvidia drivers, but Xandros does not make installing something like that easy. Sound card is detected by alsaconf, but there is still no sound either.

I'm getting a bit discouraged. :( Maybe I'll try downloading a Debian CD.

Frank.

[Frank616]

Scottro:

> I would move the downloads directory off of / and then you could probably change its permissions. <

There is something else I can look at should I decide to retry things. I do like what I have seen in fedora so far. It is just this one major snag....

>I'd say it's still for people who find the computer to be their end, rather than simply a means to do their work. As disenchantment with MS and Apple grows, more and more people come to Linux not because they're into playing with Unixlike stuff but simply because they'd rather avoid using Windows.<

That would be me. :) A computer is a tool for me -- period. I don't play with it unless I have to. I must admit that compiz intrigues me, however, even if I would never dream of installing it on a business machine.

>This is fine and several distributions attempt to fill that need. Another possibility is SimplyMepis, though it might also do the sudo no root thingie, I haven't used it in awhile.<

Yeah, since it adopted the Ubuntu base, I think it follows the same pattern. In any case, SimplyMepis is another one-man distro. That's fine as long as the one man is around. There is no guarantee as to its staying power, and another reason why I shy away from PCLinuxOS, and, to some extent, even Xandros. Because I don't like a lot of change, I'm looking for something with legs. Fedora/Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, Ubuntu would have been my choices, but I'm running into snags with everything I've tried so far. Even Xandros does not like the new hardware on my laptop that well, and it has a SLOW upgrade path.

Thanks again. I may be back yet.

Frank.

[bbfuller]

Hello Frank616

I've just put the new Mepis on my testing machine and I can tell you it does the proper root thing. It's not like Ubuntu there. It is fairly easy to install Though if you've been following the progress of the distribution you'll probably have seen that it's in the "I've run out of time, have it like it is and I'll tidy up loose ends and extras later" stage.

The problem I find with all distributions is that you really can't tell just how annoying they are going to be until you've properly used them for a while - and most of us don't have time to do that - so we just settle on one and work round its awkwardnesses.

I certainly agree with scottro though, to really enjoy Fedora you've got to enjoy the computer at least as much as you do using it.

[Frank616]

bbfuller:

>The problem I find with all distributions is that you really can't tell just how annoying they are going to be until you've properly used them for a while - and most of us don't have time to do that - so we just settle on one and work round its awkwardnesses.<

Man, there is a large dose of wisdom!! :) I love it! You've nailed my dilemma very well.

I'm still trying to decide where to go, however. I'm downloading a Debian CD on another machine at the moment, but the more I think about it, the less likely it is that Debian is going to do what I need either. I think getting codecs is going to be a problem there, as I don't know if they have the equivalent of a Livna repository or not.

The philosophy of PCLinuxOS is the best I have found so far, but the distro disappoints me at the moment. I believe that their idea is to leave the underpinnings alone (kernel and admin products), and just make newer application packages available as they appear. Even Xandros 4 (now over 18 months old) is able to use the 'hot keys' on my keyboard to adjust screen brightness on this laptop, but PCLinuxOS cannot, not does it see my sound card, nor does it properly detect my display.

Anyway, I guess I'll just muddle along. I really like F8. Now, if I can just count on it for the future, then I'd be willing to work at Samba.

Frank.

[bbfuller]

Hello Frank616

Now, if I can just count on it for the future

I think that's one thing you really can't do with Fedora. Firstly, there is no long term support for the distributions so some 13 months after F8 is released you have to resign yourself to installing again if you want security updates.

That's without all the goodies that keep coming along and which as you say, more user friendly distributions like PCLOS just don't keep up with. So then you have to resign yourself to reinstalling every six months.

I didn't really aim for the wisdom stakes in my previous post, but the above is another side of the same coin.

Don't forget also that Fedora can break. At the moment it's something as simple as the firewall configuration GUI but at one time it was it's version of Samba which wouldn't read directories over a certain size.

Other distributions have their problems but Fedora is likely to suffer from more of them just because of the enthusiasm to have the newest.

If you like Fedora, I've always thought that a sane way of deploying it (and you can see how sane I am because I don't do it) would be to run the previous version. So for instance run Fedora 7 now and move to 8 when its bugs have been ironed out just about the time Fedora 9 is released.

Doesn't help your Samba problem of course.

[JN4OldSchool]

Hmmm...Linux is Linux. Each distro has its own pecularities but when push comes to shove if something works in one distro then it should work in all distros. Sometimes, in practice, things arent this clear cut, but they are still true. I do not know enough about Samba to understand this problem, but it sure doesnt make any sense. You have Samba and you have permissions and Fedora shouldnt be a factor here. I think Frank is going to continue having major problems until he settles with one distro, for better or worse, and MAKES it work. FORCE it to do what YOU want. Beat it into submission!!!

A little philosophy for you: Fedora is a hobbiest distro. Many people will argue with this statement, then go on to piss and moan about all the problems they are having. Debian etch would be ideal for you judging from what I have read in this thread. As would CentOS if you prefer the RH/Fedora way. Why are you not on CentOS now? I use Fedora for a business SOHO distro. It works for me. But I understand what Fedora is about and if I have to run to debian for a while I am prepared to do just that.

Trust me Frank, I was right where you are now a few years ago. I was using distro after distro and they all had something wrong. One didnt like my graphics, the other was hard to update...But they were all "broke." Thank God I was smart enough to realize it was me that was the problem and that until I got into a single distro and learned it to where I understood it I wasnt going much further with Linux. That distro was FC4! And now, thanks to that experience, I can bend any distro to MY will. I might have to struggle and curse and sweat and walk away a few times, but I will eventually win because in the end it is just Linux. Linux, not Ubuntu or Fedora or debian. You dont like the sudo system in Ubuntu? Create a root account and use SU!!! Yes, you can do that. Dont give up Frank, try debian. Use their forum, find out which repos you need. You can enable all the codecs and drivers just as easily in debian as Fedora as any other distro. The secret is knowing what to do.

[Frank616]

bbfuller:

Thanks again for more good advice. I'm beginning to agree that probably fedora is not my best bet for what I need, regardless of how good it looks at the moment.

I may give Kubunu another spin. They give extended support for every fourth release or so. I don't like orange, and I don't like 'no root' but I guess I'm going to have to compromise somewhere. I'm told in the CompuServe Linux forum that it is possible to set up Samba to do what I need on Ubuntu.

Xandros 5 may be out this spring. Apparently they are waiting on the final release of KDE 4, which is probably smart. However, in the meantime, Xandros 4 is just too old to put on this new hardware. Too much to fix on a distro that is going to be retired in a few months.

Thanks again for your candor.

Frank.

[bbfuller]

Hello Frank616

If you do decide to go Ubuntu then it is possible to bend it and enable a root account. Always used to be at least, and that's Linux so I doubt it's changed.

If you don't find it on their Forums or Wiki's post here or drop me a PM, I'm sure I've got a link - or the document itself - stored around here somewhere.

Don't forget though, that just because they promise extended support it doesn't necessarily mean all the latest and greatest enhancements and programs, just security support.

[Frank616]

JN4:

Good information for sure. Yes, I need to decide and then stick with it. I'm still in the decision stage, however. I was ready to MAKE fedora work for me because I have such a favorable impression of it. However, the testing nature of it is not really what I need, I guess.

Yes, I can force a root account in Kubuntu, and that is probably what I will end up doing. They offer extended support on every fourth release or so.

By the way, I'm not planning on testing distro after distro. I was with Xandros for 6 years. This is my first real foray away from them. I tried a release or two of SuSE, but only on a spare machine, and only to have a look at it. Xandros' paying of 'protection money' to MS however soured me on it. I may go back when version 5 comes out if I cannot find anything that suits me better before then.

As you say, Linux is Linux. I'm just looking for a 'kinder, gentler' interface, I guess. As you say, ALL of them are broken somewhere. Just depends on what irks me the most, I guess.

I hadn't considered CentOS. Just didn't think of it. I may look there as well, but I am most familiar with the Debian derivatives, and I feel most at home there, and in KDE as well.

I like Linux, and I very strongly disagree with the MS business model of 'buying or burying' their competition. Other than that, however, I'm a computer USER. I'm just looking for a new distro that doesn't irk me too much that I can learn to 'beat into submission' over the next 6 years or so. :)

Thanks so much for all your kind help.

Frank.

[Anniedog]

Guest account? Just a thought did that on my simple set up setting guest account to me. No problems

[Frank616]

bbfuller:

>doesn't necessarily mean all the latest and greatest enhancements and programs, just security support.<

Thanks. I was hoping that newer releases of applications would be available for it as well.

Frank.

[bbfuller]

M'mm, I'm not too sure how far their extended support goes, best to check that out.

CentOS does offer KDE by the way, but at the moment it's offering KDE 3.5.4 whereas Fedora is at 3.5.8, 2.6.18 kernel against 2.6.23. Once again, it's great for stability and long term support but not for the newest software.

[scottro]

Sigh, the trouble is you tried the ones that I would have suggested, Ubuntu and
PCLinuxOS. Hrrm....Vector Linux used to be pretty easy to set up, as I recall. (However, I've never run a samba setup like the one you seek, so I don't know if any suggestions I make will do you any good.

Mint is supposedly even more "Works out of the box" than Ubuntu. As has been said, Fedora updates itself quite a bit, and is considered more of a midway distro, I guess--not too easy, not too hard.

I would respectfully slightly disagree with Jn4oldschool however. In many ways, Linux will not be Linux--each distribution will put in its own improvements, which can sometimes be as annoying as all the programs you have to uninstall on a laptop, where each manufacturer does its value added thing that usually just hogs resources.

Even in something as basic as samba, which is actually a third party program, there are probably differences in the default setups, which is why I suggested doing a diff on the two smb.conf files. Hrrm, there's Mandriva too.

Yes, I saw the thing about not trying distro after distro, I'm just trying to figure out what might work for you, thinking aloud so to speak. :)

It is admirable though, that folks like you, that is, folks to whom the computer is only a means to an end, care enough to try. It's also nice that you're not raving about how terrible Linux is, and the other rants that we sometimes see.

CentOS is based on a server version of Fedora, (that's a gross oversimplification, but close enough) so although it will be stable, it will also sometimes lag behind in both hardware and software support. Vector is based on Slackware, but isn't KDE oriented.

Perhaps, for the moment, doing the Kubuntu thing might be the path of least resistance. As for the original issue, I think I would try making a directory have 777 permissions, and do security as share. (These involve editing the smb.conf text file) If you do decide that Fedora is the least of several evils, and want to keep working with it, I'll be happy to go into more step by step type detail.

Personally, I think that your attitude towards this will have all of us quite happy to help.

[bbfuller]

Hello Frank616

After our discussions yesterday, I've been doing a little experimenting.

I've just installed Mandriva 2008 on my test machine.

I'm running Fedora 7 on another machine.

On Mandriva I made folders:

/home/bbfuller/boxroom
/data

On Fedora I have

/home/bbfuller/boxroom

I've set up the users bbfuller and bernard and their equivalent samba users on both machines. I've added a:

valid users = bbfuller bernard

line to each share.

Looking from Mandriva to Fedora bbfuller can see into /home/bbfuller/boxroom, bernard can't. This is exactly the same behaviour I get from any other Fedora machine on my network.

Looking from the Fedora machine into the Mandriva machine bbfuller and bernard can look into both /data and /home/bbfuller/boxroom.

Quickly looking at both of the smb.conf files I can't see anything that would account for that difference in behaviour, so as I concluded yesterday, it's probably down to some compiled in switch. If you care to take a look at the samba documentation sometime I'm sure you will agree that there are enough switches there to last a lifetime and if you ever find the one that controls that behaviour I'd be pleased to know about it.

I notice that JN4OldSchool on another thread suggests installing Samba from source, but of course we don't know which is it's default behaviour and which would need to be modified during compilation. Don't forget also that if you go that route then you cut yourself off from the Fedora updates for Samba and each time it changes you would need to recompile.

I'm not thinking of changing distribution myself, but I am quietly impressed with Mandriva, bearing in mind though what I said earlier about needing to live with a distribution before you find its shortcomings.

[JN4OldSchool]

I'm still shaky on why, exactly, this is a problem in the first place and probably shouldnt be butting in, but if you are suggesting that Fedora locks Samba users out of its /home then why not just move this file somewhere else? Seems a pretty simple solution, albeit a "workaround" that does nothing to explain this behavior, but at least it prevents this from being a hurdle or even a roadblock. Instead of putting boxroom in /home why not just put it in /data which I believe Frank even has as a separate partition.

At any rate, your objections to trying to compile Samba from source are valid, not to mention that this is a big PITA anyway. There has to be a logical reason behind this and an easy way to fix it. All I am suggesting is that running to a different distro every time you encounter a new problem is no solution either. There is nothing wrong with saying, well, this distro cant do this, sucks at that and I really dont like brown anyway so I am not going to mess with this one. But there has to be a point where you either adapt what you are doing or make the distro of your choice work for you. Mandriva is impressive. As is Mint and etch and PCLOS and MEPIS and Zenwalk and so many others...Linux is Linux. If anything behaves in a certain manner in one distro it can be MADE to act the same way in any other. Period. The trick is how hard is it going to be to force this.

[bbfuller]

Hello JN4OldSchool

I certainly agree with you. I had been used to sharing parts of my home folder with other users and when I found samba didn't work this way with Fedora just moved my main data areas out of home. It's more or less what I suggested to Frank616 in post #2 on this thread.

In a way Frank616 it makes a lot of sense to do exactly that. If you go one step further and put all your data in a separate partition then when you do reinstall you can just replace the operating system without worrying about moving or loosing your data.

[JN4OldSchool]

just plowing through this thread again...

Frank, you say you are running Win 2000? Did you ever consider running NFS instead of Samba? It would mean figuring out a new set of problems but I found NFS to be much easier to set up than Samba. Simply a matter of designating and mounting a file/partition on all the computers on the network. On all the Linux machines and on the XP box the partition remained mounted even when rebooted with no need to constantly enter the password. It just worked for me and I miss it. Damn Vista makes me mad...Anyway, just a thought as I was reading your first post. It is an alternative.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=896c9688-601b-44f1-81a4-02878ff11778&DisplayLang=en

edit: lol, reading through microscum's download page I see SFU NFS wasnt available for XP home either. I didnt know this as I always ran pro anyway. Man, I hate those clowns...

[Frank616]

bbfuller:

>Quickly looking at both of the smb.conf files I can't see anything that would account for that difference in behaviour, so as I concluded yesterday, it's probably down to some compiled in switch.<

If so, then changing it is way out of my league. Also, as you say, cuts me off from any Fedora upgrades of Samba.

>I'm not thinking of changing distribution myself, but I am quietly impressed with Mandriva, bearing in mind though what I said earlier about needing to live with a distribution before you find its shortcomings.<

On which PCLinuxOS is based. I'm still watching developments there as a new version of PCLinuxOS is on its way now that Mandriva is out. My feelings about a 'one man distro' however still make me put it lower down on my list. I've been on an OS 'island' with Xandros for a long time. I'm looking to move to something more mainstream.

>I had been used to sharing parts of my home folder with other users and when I found samba didn't work this way with Fedora just moved my main data areas out of home. It's more or less what I suggested to Frank616 in post #2 on this thread.<

And I'm more than willing to do that. I've been thinking of isolating my /home folders on my Xandros machines anyway, as for the most part, all my machines share a common /data directory and that is where most of my stuff goes for storage. I just have it symlinked to my /home directory for convenience when browsing directories.

JN4OldSchool:

>Frank, you say you are running Win 2000? Did you ever consider running NFS instead of Samba?<

I've played with NFS, but Samba is convenient. Setting up a shared Windows-style printer is a no-brainer. Yes, I could put it on the network with a small print server, but it all means more work and more changes. Just a matter of preference (or laziness) I guess.

>The trick is how hard is it going to be to force this.<

And that is the whole issue here. I'm into 'easy' :) As bbfuller mentioned, all distros are 'broken' to some extent, and it is only by using them that you find if their particular set of compromises is tolerable to you or not. I'm still in that stage of exploration. Man, I LOVE the way F8 performs. Yes, I CAN bend it to my will. But how much work is going to be involved? What if distro X does most of what I want, including easier Samba fiddling, but does not have a root account, or doesn't come in blue, or doesn't have the latest kernel or packages, or whatever? Well, I guess I'll have to make a choice as to which is most important to me.

I have not discounted Fedora. I usually frequent the CompuServe Linux forum, and one of the fellows there has been using Fedora for years, and is the one that got me to give it a try to begin with. However, I still need to give a couple of others a spin and see which one currently seems the most attractive to me. I must admit that Fedora is currently at the top of the list. But I'm not quite ready yet to give up my search.

You guys have been great, and have gone way beyond the limits of what would be expected of you. I really appreciate all your input.

Frank.

[scottro]

As I said before, in a way, anyway, a lot of us being great was earned by you and your attitude. Unfortunately, far too many folks would have been just telling us what's wrong with Fedora.

[JN4OldSchool]

As I said before, in a way, anyway, a lot of us being great was earned by you and your attitude. Unfortunately, far too many folks would have been just telling us what's wrong with Fedora.

Agreed! You dont need to feel "bad" about using anything other than Fedora. We are all just users ourselves, we use what works for us. If you prefer Ubuntu then great! Or any other distro. We are all in the same community and I will help anyone I can with my meager knowledge no matter which distro they prefer.

[alinuxFF]

I've been using Red Hat on and off since before Fedora was born and I have never liked their use of Samba. I have tried to get Samba to work on Fedora 8 to access Win XP files. I may have got further than some as I can actually access the Win XP shared files and delve into subfolders and click on the docs. However, even though Open Office will whirr away when I press on an Excel or Word doc - it just doesn't open it. Even if OO is open - the file doesn't appear. Clicking on an mp3 will open Amarok and the file will apear in the playlist, but won't play. However, HTML files will open. Any suggestions for getting over this last hurdle?

I use Fedora 8 to see what a professional, updatable distro is like, but for my everyday uses I stick to PCLinuxOS - the 2007 is pretty slick and reliable in my opinion. I grant you that it depends on the hardware - but I have got PCLinux running in a box that Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu said had no recognizable hard drive.

[bbfuller]

Hello alinuxFF

I hadn't noticed that behaviour before.

I've just tried it and while I can open pdf files on the Windows machine just by browsing to them from Linux and clicking on them, I can't do it for Open Office documents. Which is what you describe.

I can only assume that it is application dependent and is to do with the way the individual applications recognise the path to the document.

I have found though with Open Office that if you explicitly mount the share somewhere in your file system then Open Office and possibly other applications will deal with their usual files.

As I usually mount my shares rather than browsing to them I'd never realised it was a problem.

If you haven't come across it, an example of the mount command is:

mount -t cifs //atx4/bbfuller /mnt -o username=bbfuller

That mounts the share 'bbfuller' on the windows machine 'atx4' into the directory 'mnt' on the linux machine I am working on.

[Frank616]

AlinuxFF:

I noticed that, but I am new to Fedora and thought that this was just another setting I had to overcome. I'll be playing with it in the weeks to come.

bbfuller has give you a suggestion. You can also use a file manager to transfer a copy of the file over to your local machine, edit it, then transfer it back again, overwriting the original on the remote machine.

This seems to be disto dependent, as I've loaded and saved documents from OO on remote machines on other distros.

I too tried PCLinuxOS, and I like the philosophy behind the distro. However, it didn't like my hardware that much, and, after 6 years with Xandros, I'm trying to move away from 'niche' distros to something more mainstream.

Frank.

[alinuxFF]

Thanks for the suggestions bbfuller and Frank. I did manage to do as you suggested Frank - but that is a bit bothersome - and NOT how Samba should work. Haven't worked out the particular path for mounting my Windows share - may have time to experiment with it next weekend.

Wishing you all a happy New Year!

[alinuxFF]

Actually, I did find time to try your solution bbfuller - and it works! It ain't Samba but it does allow me to get to the Windows files with ease.

Thanks again!

[bbfuller]

Hello alinuxFF

Pleased it works.

The reason I use it is that I use Samba for Linux/Linux networking as well, and I use 'rsync' over it for backing up, and that demands that you write out the path to the backup directory.

Plus, when I started using Samba networking back in the days of KDE 1 it wasn't integrated with the various file browsers so it was necessary to mount some way or the other. It's just second nature now and I tend to use it before I think of browsing to a share.

[Frank616]

bbfuller:

>and I use 'rsync' over it for backing up,<

You use Samba as a path for rsync? I used to do that as well, until someone showed me a better way. rsync has its own built-in way of accessing a remote machine that is totally independent of Samba. For me, this has avoided a lot of file ownership issues (which Samba cannot transmit), though it does require a password, and that you know the ip address of the remote machine you want to sync to. For me, the benefits outweighed the disadvantages by letting rsync use its own methods of making the connection. rsync is an awesome tool.

Frank.

[bbfuller]

Hello frank616

For me, this has avoided a lot of file ownership issues (which Samba cannot transmit)

Actually, I use the form of rsync command:

rsync -av --delete /home/bbfuller /mnt

There I'm using it for my own home directory but I use it for some scripts I have written that are owned by root and I've used it for other homes as well all within the same backup script and never had any problem with it not preserving ownerships. Just so long as the permissions on the receiving directory are set properly.

I accept that's hardly intensive usage though.

[strikeforce]

Hey all I just thought I would add my two cents. I had severe issues like you trying to get sharing done in my home directory. I was generating the following errors.


Dec 30 07:59:01 localhost smbd[31197]: '/home/marc/Download' does not exist or permission denied when connecting to [Download] Error was Permission denied
Dec 30 07:59:03 localhost smbd[31210]: [2007/12/30 07:59:03, 0] smbd/service.c:make_connection_snum(1003)
Dec 30 07:59:03 localhost smbd[31210]: '/home/marc/Download' does not exist or permission denied when connecting to [Download] Error was Permission denied
Dec 30 07:59:03 localhost smbd[31211]: [2007/12/30 07:59:03, 0] smbd/service.c:make_connection_snum(1003)
Dec 30 07:59:03 localhost smbd[31211]: '/home/marc/Download' does not exist or permission denied when connecting to [Download] Error was Permission denied
Dec 30 07:59:21 localhost smbd[31246]: [2007/12/30 07:59:21, 0] smbd/service.c:make_connection_snum(1003)
Dec 30 07:59:21 localhost smbd[31246]: '/home/marc/Download' does not exist or permission denied when connecting to [Download] Error was Permission denied


I then knew that there was documentation that was getting created so I re-did my smb.conf file. Yes it's not gui but life's like that.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/AdministrationGuide/Servers/SambaServer#head-6fa05c15747f6f82abaef101513b53e318f4b475

I ended up re-doing my whole file again and it is enclosed.

I tried nautilus and it seemed to find it but I kept getting errors. What I did do is switch to user share level access and use the Places -> Connect to Server method which worked. After figuring that out I switched back to share level access and used my ip instead of the netbios name and it worked.

Overall that link from the Admin Guide has all the selinux commands that you need as well I ran every one of them so the files under my Download directory look like this.


[root@Strike-Lap Download]# ls -lZ
-rwxrwxrwx marc marc user_u:object_r:samba_share_t AdobeReader_enu-8.1.1-1.i486.rpm
-rwxrwxrwx marc marc user_u:object_r:samba_share_t bluej-220.jar
-rwxrwxrwx marc marc user_u:object_r:samba_share_t comctl32.zip
drwxr-xr-x marc marc system_u:object_r:samba_share_t Fedora-8-dvd-i386
drwxr-xr-x marc marc system_u:object_r:samba_share_t Fedora-8-dvd-x86_64
drwxr-xr-x marc marc system_u:object_r:samba_share_t Fedora-8-Live-i686
drwxr-xr-x marc marc system_u:object_r:samba_share_t Fedora-8-Live-x86_64
-rw-rw-r-- marc marc unconfined_u:object_r:samba_share_t jdk-6u3-linux-i586.bin
-rwxrwxrwx marc marc user_u:object_r:samba_share_t msie60.exe
-rw-rw-r-- marc marc unconfined_u:object_r:samba_share_t netbeans-6.0-javase-linux.sh
-rw-r--r-- root root unconfined_u:object_r:samba_share_t smb.conf


Hope this helps.