(SOLVED)Cannot file share 2 Mate machines.

[bimme]

By trying to click my way in via caja I am not able to get into the Imac folders from the toshiba
In terminal caja smb://bim-Imac.local got me in. which opened the folder window and then was able to see and open picture files ONE time only. Same for Music.
I closed the window and then tried again and it would't work. Saying "Could not display "smb://bim-imac.local/Music".Same for Pictures. The file is of an unknown type.
these are mp3's and jpeg's. nothing was changed between the two tries and did it within 2 mins.
Then I unmounted the two shared folders on the Imac and used terminal again, and I was in again. playing an mp3 and looking at pictures.

[altair4]

I don't know what to tell you. At this point your smb.conf is unsupportable because of this line:

include = /etc/samba/smbshared.conf

It's anyone's guess what's in there but that kind of circular reference will make troubleshooting very difficult.

All I did was point out the obvious mistakes.

[bimme]

So I connected again and before going in to look I made bookmarks in caja. It's been working since then. I'm playing whole albums and looking at pics and browsing web at the same time. All's good.
Here is the text in smbshared.conf just for interest sake. I'm not going to mess with it now. This is the first time I've successfully connected the 2 machines in Linux and we'll see how it goes from here. It was a hard struggle. Thank you very much for your help and patience with me. Very much appreciated. I will mark this topic as SOLVED.
You said concerning smbshared.conf "It's anyone's guess what's in there but that kind of circular reference will make troubleshooting very difficult." I'm missing something and don't understand your comment.
I've added the contents of it here.
[Music]
comment = Linux File Server Share
path = /media/bim/storage/Music
browsable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = yes
available = yes
public = no
writable = no
force user = bim
valid users = bim, kristine

[Pictures]
comment = Linux File Server Share
path = /media/bim/storage/Pictures
browsable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = yes
available = yes
public = no
writable = no
force user = bim
valid users = bim, kristine

[altair4]

I'm pleased you got it to work.

The "include" parameter in smb.conf is used to incorporate one smb.conf or part of an smb.conf into another. This is far removed from the standard way of dealing with samba where everything is in /etc/samba/smb.conf. It appears all it had was your share definitions ( which I see incorporated my recommendations ) but it can be quite complex - unnecessarily complex for a home network.

If you and I were horses I would be an old War horse. A calm, deliberate, focused, boring draft horse. I may have my moments of flash like a Percheron but mostly I'm more like a Belgian.

You on the other hand are a Mustang. Quick to flight and fast but .......

[bimme]

I like the way you put it with the horses. I understand. That's why I broke my OS so many times. Bucking Bronko. I promise I will calm down.
I just wanted to get 'er done. And we did. I will be looking at these instructions for a while and most likely simplify it down to a more reasonable solution once I understand more. I've learned a lot in 4 weeks. Let's see how the next 4 turn out.
Thanks for everything altair4

[bimme]

I thought I had it all working but it was unreliable, constantly not being able to mount the directories being shared by Imac. So I continued to work it. This is now hopefully for the most part solved.
For starters I went into my windows machines and even though the Linux Mates were not able to connect reliably to each other the windows boxes had no problems connecting to the Imac. Now isn't that strange?
Went back to Mates. I downloaded Caja-share through the Software Manager. This allows you to right click a folder and share it. (Kinda like windows does). After that every is working reliably.( so far) So now I can access 2 different user Home directories and files. The one thing I've not been able to fix yet is that I cannot access a seperate NTFS partition on the Imac from the toshiba. If I right click and share those just like I did the 2 homes then everything breaks. If I edit them out of /etc/samb/smb.conf everything starts working again. Below is the output in /etc/samba/smb.conf as it was written by Samba by right clicking to share folders, I did not edit it manually except the "### include = /etc/samba/smbshared.conf" which I wanted to disable because it's unconventional, I'll remove it later. Obviously I'll be making changes for security, right now everything is wide open for access. If you're using Mate I must warn against any NEMO commands unless you really know what you are doing, and I don't. Once Nemo gets involved for whatever reason my experience is that it will give you the cinnemon desktop at the next reboot from which I could not recover and change back to mate. This happened on both Imac and Toshiba. I had to reinstall. Why did I get Nemo involved? I'm wreckless. I'm sure i'm not only the Bucking Bronko!


[global]
server string = Bim's Linux Box
workgroup = workgroup
netbios name = bim
security = user
; encrypt passwords = yes
; guest account = nobody
name resolve order = bcast host
### include = /etc/samba/smbshared.conf

; wins support = no
wins support = no
[home]
comment = imac home bim
path = /home

; browseable = yes
guest ok = yes

available = no
writable = yes

browsable = no
public = no
[Modeling]
path = /home/kristine/Pictures/Modeling
; available = yes
; browsable = yes
public = yes
; writable = no

available = no
browsable = no
writable = no
[Music]
comment = Bim Music
path = /home/bim/Music

; browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
available = yes
browsable = yes
public = yes
writable = no

[Pictures]
path = /home/bim/Pictures
available = yes
browsable = yes
public = yes
writable = no