PCC - Access Windows (SMB) shared drives NOT working

[Cris70]

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right section to post my question.

I want to mount an SMB share at boot (it's an external USB disk connected to my router), but if I use "PCC - Access Windows (SMB) shared drives and directories", and press "Search servers" nothing comes up (apart the very same PC this PCLOS is running on).

I have a Windows PC in the same workgroup, and the router in another (non configurable) workgroup, but neither show in the list on the left.
Does anybody know what's the magic behind this "search servers" button?

Note that I can see the shares if I manually mount them or browsing them directly with Dolphin.

Any help?

T.I.A.

Cris

[muungwana]

open the terminal, run this command and give your output

smbtree -d 2 -N

[Cris70]

This is the result (external IP address amended):

[cris@polaris ~]$ smbtree -d 2 -N
rlimit_max: increasing rlimit_max (1024) to minimum Windows limit (16384)
added interface eth0 ip=fe80::213:8fff:fefc:de61%eth0 bcast=fe80::ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff%eth0 netmask=ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::
added interface nrtap ip=fe80::d418:f0ff:fe27:44a0%nrtap bcast=fe80::ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff%nrtap netmask=ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::
added interface eth0 ip=192.168.1.3 bcast=192.168.1.255 netmask=255.255.255.0
added interface nrtap ip=10.0.0.1 bcast=10.255.255.255 netmask=255.0.0.0
tdb(/var/cache/samba/gencache.tdb): tdb_open_ex: could not open file /var/cache/samba/gencache.tdb: Permission denied
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.3 ( 192.168.1.3 )
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.3 ( 192.168.1.3 )
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.3 ( 192.168.1.3 )
HOMELAN
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.3 ( 192.168.1.3 )
        \\POLARIS                       polaris
Error connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Success)
cli_start_connection: failed to connect to POLARIS<20> (0.0.0.0). Error NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL
        \\PCANNA
Error connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Success)
cli_start_connection: failed to connect to PCANNA<20> (0.0.0.0). Error NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL

As you can see the Windows PC is visible here (\\PCANNA) together with my own PC (\\POLARIS - the one with PCLOS). But PCC only sees "polaris", nothing else. Also, the NAS is not visible neither with smbtree not with PCC. The NAS is on 192.168.1.1.

Bye
Cris

[muungwana]

Does the windows pc see the NAS?

sufficient number of people have had the same problem as you at some point or another but i dont there is a "bullet proof"  and out of the box solution to it

There are work around though. One of the them is to use IP addresses and not host names.The other one is to use host names but have them match to their IP addresses in the host file.

Lets go with the second approach.

Open PCC -> network and internet->others->host definitions, click "add" and fill in the IP address field with the IP address of the other computer and host name field with the host name of the other computer.

Run smbtree again and post your result

[Cris70]

Hi muungwana, sorry for the long delay.

The Windows PC does NOT see the NAS when using the "network neighborhood". It does see the NAS if I map the networks drives directly (i.e. using the IP address of the NAS).

I tried your suggestion and updated the /etc/hosts file. Now my hosts file looks like this:

[cris@polaris ~]$ cat /etc/hosts
# generated by drakhosts
127.0.0.1 polaris.guadagnino localhost
192.168.1.5 PCAnna pcanna

Here is the output from the smbtree command:

[cris@polaris ~]$ smbtree -d 2 -N
rlimit_max: increasing rlimit_max (1024) to minimum Windows limit (16384)
added interface eth0 ip=fe80::213:8fff:fefc:de61%eth0 bcast=fe80::ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff%eth0 netmask=ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::
added interface eth0 ip=192.168.1.3 bcast=192.168.1.255 netmask=255.255.255.0
tdb(/var/cache/samba/gencache.tdb): tdb_open_ex: could not open file /var/cache/samba/gencache.tdb: Permission denied
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.3 ( 192.168.1.3 )
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.3 ( 192.168.1.3 )
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.3 ( 192.168.1.3 )
HOMELAN
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.3 ( 192.168.1.3 )
        \\POLARIS                       polaris
Error connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Success)
cli_start_connection: failed to connect to POLARIS<20> (0.0.0.0). Error NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL
        \\PCANNA

PCC is still seeing "polaris" only.

Bye
Cris

[demilord]

tdb(/var/cache/samba/gencache.tdb): tdb_open_ex: could not open file /var/cache/samba/gencache.tdb: Permission denied

looks like a permission problem but im not sure if its the cause but you could try google this

[rubentje1991]

I never had time to dig into this, making it work....
I don't know if you're running KDE, but I always use smb4k to access Windows shares if it is needed (once a year or so...)
=> just another option you have....