[Samba] Can't get share to show up on windows

[KC8LDO]

Peter;

You may find the following of interest. I had a problem where one box, 
Fedora 11, would not browse the local network for shares. I too have a very 
simple network, no DC's, no active directory etc, just one machine acting as 
a local browse master. Of the several Linux boxes I have the F11 box was the 
only one I had trouble with. I found the following info and that seemed to 
fix it for me. Turns out it really wasn't a samba problem.

I did an awful lot of research using Google on the network file share
browsing issue I had with Fedora 11 using Nautilus. The two things that
stand out are something the ISP's are doing and also with the NetBIOS name
resolution order done by Samba.

It seems many ISP's are now using "DNS redirection" in place of simply
returning an error message that the URL can't be found with the appropriate
error code. Instead they redirect bad URL's to some advert site or offer to
do a search for a similar URL. This redirection seems to really screw with
Samba's NetBIOS name resolution method.  Fortunately for me Comcast has a
way through the user account preferences to turn this "feature" OFF. Various
posts on the 'net claim this violates the documented way DNS look ups work.
The suggestion is to either turn it off if you can, which may involve a
phone call to your ISP, if not then LOUDLY complain about it screwing up you
network.

The second item is the NetBIOS name resolution order in Samba. I have the
following line in my samba.conf file:

name resolve order = lmhosts wins bcast host dhcp (or DNS for last entry)

https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/389909

Right now browsing for local shares using Samba through Nautilus's "Network"
option seems to be working, for now.

You may also want to check your firewall and make sure the ports are opened 
for file sharing as well. A few people have forgotten about it.

Regards;

Leland C. Scott
KC8LDO

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Olcott" <peteolcott at gmail.com>
To: <samba at lists.samba.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2010 10:15 AM
Subject: [Samba] Can't get share to show up on windows


>I have successfully set of two Samba servers under Red Hat Linux 6.0 and
> 9.0. I am having trouble getting Samba 3.0 Fedora Linux Samba to show up 
> on
> the windows machine. I can't find the solution in either of the two books
> that I bought, or the online resources after spending several days working
> on this.

I spent about a week or two, several hours a day, looking before I found the 
above info!

>
> I only need a relatively simple network, yet I also want it to be 
> reasonably
> secure. With my first server I set up fixed IP addresses and edited the
> etc/hosts file. Somehow my second server can connect to my XP clients
> without changes to the etc/hosts file, and without fixed IP addresses set 
> up
> on the windows XP side. I don't know how it does this. I probably want 
> this
> new server to work this same way.
>
> I must have two Samba servers and three Windows XP boxes all connected. 
> The
> Red Hat Linux 9.0 samba box is currently working correctly with the three 
> XP
> boxes.
>
> Appreciate you help.
>
>