[Samba] Windows and Linux can't access Samba at the same time.

Sebastian Arcus s.arcus at open-t.co.uk
Mon Feb 10 11:58:54 MST 2014


On 10/02/14 17:36, Rowland Penny wrote:
> On 10/02/14 16:42, Sebastian Arcus wrote:
>> On 10/02/14 09:32, Rowland Penny wrote:
>> </snip>
>>>>
>>> Hi, you might think that you are running a Ubuntu samba server, but 
>>> you are not, you are running a workgroup.
>> Hmm - I'm not sure the above makes sense. He is running samba in 
>> server mode on the Ubuntu machine - so he is running a samba server. 
>> Unless you are trying to say something about Samba in DC mode, or 
>> even something else? Samba in workgroup mode is still a samba server.
>
> So every windows machine that is part of a workgroup is also a server, 
> no, they are all clients, there are no servers in a workgroup.
Hmm - actually yes. If a Windows machine shares out any 
folder/directory, it is automatically an SMB server. It acts as an SMB 
file server, sharing out SMB shares - so it is one. At least in the way 
client-server relationships have been understood in the world of 
networking since times immemorial. If you mean there are no *logon* 
servers in the world of SMB workgroups, that is correct. But there is no 
limit on how many SMB servers you can have in a workgroup. Every machine 
that runs a piece of SMB software in server mode and shares out 
directories - being a Windows, OSX, Linux etc. machine - is 
automatically an SMB server because it is acting as one. Just as you can 
have as many FTP or NFS servers as you like in a network.

Just because in the MS Windows world sharing folders out and accessing 
folders shared on other machines is lumped together in one package as 
"file and folder sharing" doesn't mean the distinction does not exist in 
reality.

</snip>
>>> The smb.conf on the raspberry pi needs to be basically the same as 
>>> the ubuntu one but without the shares.
>> I'm not sure about that one either. The pi is acting as a samba 
>> client. It should be able to just connect to any Samba compliant 
>> server - even a Windows machine with file sharing enabled. Can't 
>> quite see it needing the same smb.conf as the server.
>
> Well yes, I will give you this one, but the users on the pi will still 
> have to be users on any workgroup computer that they want to connect to.

Not strictly true. At least several versions of Windows (starting from 
about Windows Vista, if I remember correctly) will kindly prompt you for 
a username/password  combination when accessing an SMB server where the 
credentials of the user currently logged in locally have been rejected. 
Than you can input on the spot whatever username/password combination 
the SMB server will accept. So no, you don't really have to have a user 
account already setup on the client in order to access the SMB server - 
it might be convenient, but you don't have to. Same goes for the 
smbclient command line tool in Linux, which will happily accept 
username/password combinations as arguments.



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