[Samba] new user introduction, and a few questions

Xen list at xenhideout.nl
Sat Jul 16 13:36:51 UTC 2016


kendell clark schreef op 16-07-2016 9:31:

> hi all
> My name is Kendell Clark, and I've just subscribed to this list. I
> thought I'd write this email to introduce myself, and ask a couple of
> questions about configuring samba. I'm a co developer of a linux
> distribution for the visually impaired and disabled called Sonar GNU
> linux, which you can learn more about at http://www.sonargnulinux.com.
> I've been struggling to come up with a default samba configuration file
> that will work for at least most windows and linux environments if not
> all.

Basically you want a configuration for the local systems running your 
distribution that will share stuff in a certain default way?

Or are you also concerned with importing stuff from the other computers?

Importing stuff might be an issue as it depends on the GUI of your 
distribution? What I mean is that e.g. Linux Mint (Cinnamon) is rather 
user friendly but I would not suggest it is ready for everything such as 
mounting random shares from other servers? I haven't tried in full.

I do know Mint supports the USERSHARE thing and will allow people to 
share their own folders from the GUI as long as you don't mess with it 
behind the scenes (e.g. using a net command yourself) because it doesn't 
sync that.

So I do not know how good the mounting experience is from Linux.

Personally I am trying to fix it as much as possible from my own project 
in such a way that the names of the shares are almost incapable of being 
changed (by a regular user).

A convient mount dialog, that also reinstates a mount on login, to my 
knowledge and mind, doesn't really exist yet.

This is not Samba, this is mount.cifs, and the GUI configuration 
whatever Distro or DE uses.


> My next couple of questions have to do with the windows side of things.
> I don't use it myself I'm  strictly a linux guy but I do set windows up
> for my fiance a lot, and  I install it on my laptop periodically to 
> test
> samba on to make sure it works like I've set it up. One thing I've
> noticed is that it seems somehow able to autoconfigure most of this
> stuff. If I change the work group name on mellisa's computer, a windows
> installation on my desktop or another computer finds it and connects
> with no problems, prompting for a user name and password.

You mean for shares that were already configured previously and are now 
slightly changed on the "server"?

> Samba doesn't.
> It simply won't connect. Is there an "automatic" or "figure it out"
> option in the config file I can use? The only reason I'm asking is
> because a lot of my users are not very experienced they're mostly
> windows users and they expect things to more or less configure
> themselves. If they have to configure stuff their first option is
> generally to complain and ask why I can't simply do it for them.

This is not really Samba, again, I am not meaning to be rude.

But Samba has very little to do with actually /accessing/ files (or 
shares).

Most configuration is done by GUI environments that try to make some of 
it work.

Now I realize the "client" side of things is also important. I am just 
wishing to elude that the user side of this with regards to this, is 
actually a componenent of your desktop environment (mate, as you call 
it).

> My next
> question has to do with this "homegroup" stuff. I don't know much about
> windows but this seems to be a different sharing system, not cifs, and
> windows specific. Can samba take advantage of these or should I just
> disable the home group stuff on all the windows computers I want to
> connect with?

I personally consider the HomeGroup a very detrimental thing. They have 
broken network-browsing, apparently, for regular fileshares and won't 
even allow you to see the hosts on the network anymore, instead opening 
webpages to configure routers and such, if these can be found.

If anything, I would want to change Windows computers such that regular 
browsing works again; that will solve a lot of problems. Even among 
Windows computers themselves, HomeGroup is terribly annoying and 
inconvenient.

It appears the only way from e.g. a Windows 10 computer to access any 
shares on the network, is to use a direct access link like 
\\server\share. That is the most inconvenient thing there has ever been 
for a Windows user. I do not know how to turn HomeGroup (In Windows 10) 
off myself, but I would really stay away from it if I were you, rather 
than try to incorporate it in your system (although a best of both 
worlds may be possible if you do want to support it).

"Support" is not the same as "Wanting to use it".

I don't get the Windows filesharing thing anymore. I must be getting old 
(35 now ;-)).


> My last question has to do with what samba shows when I do
> manage to connect to my fiance's windows computer. A typical listing
> looks like
> $admin$
> c$
> f$
> Users
> The only one I can successfully connect to is the "users" folder. The
> rest lock me out regardless of what user name and password I supply.

I take it your c$ and f$ are complete volume shares? I mean a complete 
"partition" with a drive letter is getting shared?

I have no clue why that wouldn't mount, I have not tried it myself, 
sorry. But in general it seems like the stuff you want to mount cannot 
end with a $ sign?

> If
> I connect through a test windows installation windows doesn't display
> anything but the "Users" item so I'm guessing those are system shares
> that aren't supposed to be used.

Ah, yes.


> In order to access flash drives,
> external hard drives, etc across the network I have to set them up
> explicitly to be shared. I'm wondering if samba can access these?

Sure, why not. Do you mean shares from Windows computers, or shares from 
your own systems?

You ask about Samba access, not samba sharing.

There is no inhibition in Samba (mount.cifs) to mount shared directories 
from other hosts. The inhibition is in how convenient the user interface 
of the local system is going to be in configuring all of that (and not 
getting fixed with a solution that is unchangable by a regular user).

I am not knowledgeable enough yet about the GVFS system. I do know you 
can sufficiently configure stuff for display in fstab: there are options 
for choosing the name that something will have in your GUI, I take it 
this is the same for Mate as it is for Cinnamon.

x-gvfs-show and x-gvfs-name come to mind. Look it up, it will help, I 
guess.

But these are "root" access things that mess up fstab. I am sure it is 
also possible to get stuff mounted in /media/user/, I just don't know 
how good that will be.

You will need to find a way to either integrate the "Gnome Automounter" 
(using /media/user) or by having a custom solution that adds and changes 
things in fstab to be able to pass those "pretty" parameters to 
Mate/Cinnamon.

However, I do not know if a solution exists that will be so convenient 
that it asks your for a password when you log in.

That also doesn't exist for mounting crypt shares.

Not really. Not very well. If I put something in crypttab, SystemD will 
bug me with its unlocking, even it is set to noauto and nofail. SystemD 
is not a very good beast.

So I cannot put those shares (or cryptdevices) in fstab or crypttab the 
way I want to.

And then the mounting feature from Cinnamon also won't work. Anyway.





> And if
> so, how to set it up? Sorry to ask so many questions, I'm just trying 
> to
> come up with a default samba configuration that will work in most
> situations without configuration needed, if that's possible. I'm a
> fairly knowledgable linux user but i'm still learning how to develop a
> linux distribution that's user friendly and does what most users want
> out of the box. My files are attached, they're both very small.
> Thanks for any help

Like I said, I am a little angry with myself for not making it more 
clear in a nice way, that most of the user interface stuff doesn't 
really belong to Samba in that sense ;-).

Regards.

But you have my sympathy, I am trying to do much of the same thing 
currently with Cinnamon, but just dealing with a system of fixed mounts 
that I want to have the user to have no say about ;-).

Of course, having actual convenience would be much nicer.

Regards.



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