Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

[cps22]

Wondering if this release will allow connecting to Windows shares. The last few releases, I think since 8.04 have not been able to reliably connect to Win shares.

This has continually been a "show stopper" for me and I thought rather than spend the time and frustration again, I would ask the community.

Has anyone been able to reliably connect to Win Shares from Kubuntu 11.10?

I don't mean sharing files that other Windows systems will use, but connecting to Windows shares on Windows 2008 server, Windows 2003 server, etc.

This is a great forum, thanks in advance.

CPS22

[Teunis]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

I'm not enough of an MS person to understand what a Windows Share is.

Right now I'm in a place where several dozen people share an internet connection via satellite.
This involves a local server for login and company firewall (=censorship).
I am probably the only one using Linux and when I check the network part of Dolphin I see items like Workgroup and MShome.
When I click on those I get the names of others' computers and in some of them I can find documents en media.
Others ask me for a user name and password.

As said, virtually all run MS.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

If by "Windows Shares" you mean shared folders hosted on Windows system, the answer is Yes and every release of Kubuntu (or any other linux distro for that matter) that I'veused has been able as well.

You need to install samba to support windows file sharing.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

I cannot connect to a qnap nas (via samba) that was working with the previous release... still troubleshooting...

[sithlord48]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

depending on the version of windows (vista+) you might have to change you settings on the samba server to allow non NTLMv2 clients. basicly if you have vista or above it will not (be default) want to talk to another machine unless its also vista or above.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

I cannot connect to a qnap nas (via samba) that was working with the previous release... still troubleshooting...

Got it working... it doesn't recognize the server name I choose now, but if I use the IP it connects just fine.

[not12listen]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

i have Kubuntu 11.10 running as my media machine (hooked to a big tv) and it connects to my Server 2008 without any issues.

as detailed above, it will not find it via name, but will when you enter the IP address of the machine in question.

from that point, it will prompt you for the appropriate username/password (Windows accounts) for access to whichever share you are trying to get into.

so... here is a rough breakdown of the steps:
(Kubuntu)
open Dolphin, go to Network
type in the IP address of the machine you wish to connect to, hit Enter
type in your Windows username/password, hit Enter

that should be it.

be aware, if you got all fancy with NTFS permissions on the Server, you'll still only be granted access to the specific shared folders that the user you specified (in the above username/password) is allowed to access.

if the user account (on the Windows Server) 'jeff' is granted access to the 'music' and 'video' folders, but not the 'applications' and 'blah' folder, that still holds true regardless of the fact that you're connecting from a Linux OS.

i posted the steps by memory and will double check them tonight when i get home from work.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

...
be aware, if you got all fancy with NTFS permissions on the Server, you'll still only be granted access to the specific shared folders that the user you specified (in the above username/password) is allowed to access.

if the user account (on the Windows Server) 'jeff' is granted access to the 'music' and 'video' folders, but not the 'applications' and 'blah' folder, that still holds true regardless of the fact that you're connecting from a Linux OS.
...

I gotta laugh a little because although I connect via samba, the QNAP is actually running linux, but I find NFS to be more cumbersome to use...

But this deal with not finding the server name... is this a bug then? I had to trash my .kde during upgrade so I don't know if I had set something special up before to have it recognize it by name...

EDIT:
Note: If the servername is not in /etc/hosts, use the IP Address of the server in place of the servername. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Samba

i.e. no bug.

[not12listen]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

slight modification of the previous posted steps:

open Dolphin
click on Network
click on Samba Shares
in the address bar above (smb:/) type in the address of your Windows Server - hit Enter
type in your Windows account username/password

ta da!

i even went through the process of adding each shared folder to the side navigation bar of Dolphin (right click and 'add to places') and i verified that the steps are the same between 11.04 and 11.10.

if i can help any further, just let me know.

[doonze]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

Dolphin (through Samba) has never had any issues seeing and accessing any windows share for me..... Now..... mounting it is a whole other story.\ When oh when will we ever get a simple "mount as network drive" (or whatever windows calls it) option like windows has had for 10 years??

Anyway, with dolphin you can access the share, and do whatever you want with it. You can also download smbk4 and it will even mount it for you (however sleep will not work while you have a share mounted with smbk4, boo). HOWEVER there are some issues I find annoying. Unless you mount it, you don't get thumbnails. And if you access a file it will download it to the local computer to work with it, not "stream" it. And some other programs won't see the share either unless you mount it, even some multimedia programs. I've found if you really want it to be super useful, and act like a thumb drive instead of a FTP site, then you really need to mount it....and that can be easy as pie or next to impossible, depending on about a thousand variables. Smbk4 is probably the most easy way, but it also takes some tweeking sometimes. on 10.04 I couldn't get it to mount my NAS no matter what I did, on 11.10 all I had to do was check a box next to "Mount as superuser" and it worked with no messing around. So whatever.

Just to give you an example. I've had my Dlink 321 NAS (Network Attached Storage) running a windows share auto-mounted for over a year with no problems,(it did take about 4 months of messing with it to get it to finally work right) then about 3 days ago BOTH my 11.10 computer started giving a "only root can mount this" in dolphin. I've spent about 18 hours over 3 days trying to figure out a way to get it to mount again. I just finally got one working again just before posting this. But I still think Kubuntu is well worth it.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

Streaming is not the default behavior for samba but can be done if you have access to the setup.

NFS shares for the most part will act as though they are local folders so everything works and well.

If you have NFS available from your NAS I reccommend it. There are several walk-throughs on this forums and the net.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

...
If you have NFS available from your NAS I reccommend it. There are several walk-throughs on this forums and the net.

I would always end up with permission issues when I used NFS and have to run

sudo chmod -R -x+X /mnt/public

all the time.

I need samba anyway for my wife's Windows laptop, so I just gave up. Samba supports a Recycle Bin on the NAS, but NFS doesn't (not sure if that is a NFS thing, or just QNAP).

[oshunluvr]

Re: Can this release connect to Windows Shares?

The permissions thing can be solved, but with the other issues I think you're right to stay with samba - like you needed my validation