WORKGROUP vs MSHOME

[altair4]

[1] In Debian - as in LMDE - there is a "samba" daemon that combines smbd and nmbd into one service. To restart samba you run:

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sudo service samba restart

[2] In Ubuntu - as in all the standard Mint Os's - the two daemons are seperated. To restart samba in Mint ( non - LMDE ) you run:

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sudo service smbd restart

And just to be extra special thorough:

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sudo service nmbd restart

[3] The error message that suggested you install samba4 is a cruel joke since:

These packages contain snapshot versions of Samba 4, the next-generation
version of Samba. These should be considered _experimental_, and should
not be used in production. In particular, no guarantees are made with
regard to upgrades between versions.

If you took the advice you need to uninstall samba4 and reinstall samba.

[Prescottech]

Hmmm. I have a hard time believing that windows XP is the likely network enviorment now days. Many have vista or 7.

[I2k4]

I'll just say this: the first Linux distro that makes home LAN network connection as easy as Windows does, will put all the rest out of business. I've looked into and really don't have time to figure out Samba. I've been enjoying and been impressed with how much I can do on Linux, but I can't connect for file sharing except via DropBox. On Windows I can (OMG) watch a video on my W7 netbook from the external hard drive attached to my XP main computer. On Linux, I can go nuts reading about Samba and scratching my head.

[altair4]

Considering what Windows did to file sharing in Win7 it is now easier to create shares in Linux than it is in Windows.

[xox101]

Considering what Windows did to file sharing in Win7 it is now easier to create shares in Linux than it is in Windows.

Nonsense. I have only ever been able to share files from a Linux box to Windows boxes and vice versa without having to change samba settings and that was while using Mepis. No other distribution has ever come close to that out of the box. Windows 7 on the other hand makes sharing files and folders across my network between other pc's and my servers a breeze.

Each and every time I install a new version of Mint/Ubuntu I have to edit smb.conf to suit my network with a file I found a few years ago on the net while hunting for advice about samba. And my network is a bog standard home network. I open the samba folder in etc as administrator/root and replace the conf file with this one. The only thing that has to be changed is the network name, in my case changing from WORKGROUP to MSHOME. Reboot and I have a fully functioning network browser on a Linux box.

[tarkus]

I run my laptop on a corporate IT network that is unfortunately totally MS-centric. I had been running LinuxMint 11 happily for the best part of a year and able to access all smb shares and cifs servers I required access to. Last week I upgraded to Maya, and suddenly I can only access shares within the workgroup "WORKGROUP", which doesn't contain anything useful. All attempts to access shared folders on servers in other workgroups fail, either with a "Failed to mount Windows share" error, or a "Cannot display location "smb://xxxyyyy/" Failed to retrieve share list from server".

What the heck changed between these two versions??

Each and every time I install a new version of Mint/Ubuntu I have to edit smb.conf to suit my network with a file I found a few years ago on the net while hunting for advice about samba. And my network is a bog standard home network. I open the samba folder in etc as administrator/root and replace the conf file with this one. The only thing that has to be changed is the network name, in my case changing from WORKGROUP to MSHOME. Reboot and I have a fully functioning network browser on a Linux box.

That doesn't makse sense to me, since it's actually setting the domain or workgroup for the Samba sever, not the Samba client. Anyway, I did try that, just to see what would happen, and it made no difference at all.

[powerhouse]

Not sure my post helps, but I'm running Samba on LM 13 Mate and don't see any accessibility issues. I installed the system-config-samba tool for easier Samba configuration, though I can't remember having used it. I use different workgroup names on the devices - some are mshome, others workgroup, and again others with a different name. I also run a Win7 guest in a VM (domU in Xen).

All shared devices are discovered and accessible, once I enter the username/password for the shares.

The only problem I have is that file transfer under Xen (both dom0 and domU) is much too slow - ~4MB/s where I would expect 10-12MB/s on 100Mb/s Fast Ethernet and something closer to 100MB/s on Gigabit links.

[Essexraptor]

or... right click on my computer > properties > computername

since when was this a Windows support site?
lol

Thanks

At my age ... trying to remember my own name is a struggle... back as far as XP!!

Even here .....these MS titbits are useful with multi OS households

[Essexraptor]

I run my laptop on a corporate IT network that is unfortunately totally MS-centric. I had been running LinuxMint 11 happily for the best part of a year and able to access all smb shares and cifs servers I required access to. Last week I upgraded to Maya, and suddenly I can only access shares within the workgroup "WORKGROUP", which doesn't contain anything useful. All attempts to access shared folders on servers in other workgroups fail, either with a "Failed to mount Windows share" error, or a "Cannot display location "smb://xxxyyyy/" Failed to retrieve share list from server".

What the heck changed between these two versions??

Each and every time I install a new version of Mint/Ubuntu I have to edit smb.conf to suit my network with a file I found a few years ago on the net while hunting for advice about samba. And my network is a bog standard home network. I open the samba folder in etc as administrator/root and replace the conf file with this one. The only thing that has to be changed is the network name, in my case changing from WORKGROUP to MSHOME. Reboot and I have a fully functioning network browser on a Linux box.

That doesn't makse sense to me, since it's actually setting the domain or workgroup for the Samba sever, not the Samba client. Anyway, I did try that, just to see what would happen, and it made no difference at all.

May not be related... but... I have the same issues on a small home network after each Mint upgrade. I often resort to doing the same as xox101. However..I have also found, with my last 2 Mint installs at least, that it seems to be down to delayed network discovery. Not ideal.... but after booting ... I just leave the thing ticking over for 5 minutes before hitting my Networks Servers link.

[xox101]

Trying out Mint 15 RC and I have found exactly the same problem as on all other releases, namely I cannot connect to my home network and thus to my server. I tried numerous times but all I ever got was a timeout so I resorted to what I had posted previously and pasted in my downloaded samba configuration file in place of the default one, changed my network name from WORKGROUP to MSHOME, rebooted and voila...my server appears immediately. Obviously this needs to be done as root.

[altair4]

Trying out Mint 14 and I have found the exact darn problem as on all other releases, namely I can connect to to every host even though they are in 3 different workgroups. The output of smbtree:

WORKGROUP
\\ALTAIR
\\ALTAIR\J$ Default share
\\ALTAIR\C$ Default share
\\ALTAIR\Linux
\\ALTAIR\ADMIN$ Remote Admin
\\ALTAIR\F$ Default share
\\ALTAIR\I$ Default share
\\ALTAIR\MACBOOK
\\ALTAIR\print$ Printer Drivers
\\ALTAIR\D$ Default share
\\ALTAIR\IPC$ Remote IPC
\\ALTAIR\LMint

VWORKGROUP
\\VVMINT14 vvmint14 server (Samba, LinuxMint)
\\VVMINT14\Public
\\VVMINT14\IPC$ IPC Service (vvmint14 server (Samba, LinuxMint))
\\VVMINT14\print$ Printer Drivers

LWORKGROUP
\\XUB1204 xub1204 server (Samba, Ubuntu)
\\XUB1204\MACBOOK
\\XUB1204\Public
\\XUB1204\Pictures
\\XUB1204\Downloads
\\XUB1204\Test
\\XUB1204\HP970-Draft HP970-Draft
\\XUB1204\HP970-Photo HP970-Photo
\\XUB1204\PDF PDF
\\XUB1204\HP970 HP970
\\XUB1204\IPC$ IPC Service (xub1204 server (Samba, Ubuntu))
\\XUB1204\print$ Printer Drivers

Does anyone know how to fix this because I've been told that all the workgroups need to match?

[crboone]

Trying out Mint 15 RC and I have found exactly the same problem as on all other releases, namely I cannot connect to my home network and thus to my server. I tried numerous times but all I ever got was a timeout so I resorted to what I had posted previously and pasted in my downloaded samba configuration file in place of the default one, changed my network name from WORKGROUP to MSHOME, rebooted and voila...my server appears immediately. Obviously this needs to be done as root.

Thanks for this -- I did the same (but replaced the network name with my private network name) and it worked! I couldn't believe how it worked first try. I created a new text document on my networked Win 7 PC to verify it was really working.

[Brahim Salem]

Currently Linux Mint is following the MSHOME workgroup model, presumably because most most Mint users are in a home environment where networking with Windows XP Home is likely to be the most common scenario.

Comments would be most welcome.

I have 15 computers runnig Linux Mint 13 Mate and connected to a Windows 7 server with no issues. On the server I dual-boot Linux Mint and Windows 7 (Which I found preconfigured as a server at my new workplace). When i try to connect with Mint on the server I can't. I want to remove Windows 7 and replace it with Mint what should I configure to achieve the same results I do with Windows 7 on Linux Mint. I mean how can I replace windows 7 server with Mint and share connection?

[js3915]

I have 15 computers runnig Linux Mint 13 Mate and connected to a Windows 7 server with no issues. On the server I dual-boot Linux Mint and Windows 7 (Which I found preconfigured as a server at my new workplace). When i try to connect with Mint on the server I can't. I want to remove Windows 7 and replace it with Mint what should I configure to achieve the same results I do with Windows 7 on Linux Mint. I mean how can I replace windows 7 server with Mint and share connection?

Not sure what you meant by Windows 7 server windows servers are 2003,2008&2012. Windows 7 is more a desktop OS versus server.. Either way simplest is to install samba. Guessing by installing tasksel and running it would give you option to install Samba server or file server install then your pretty much good to go. On whatever server you install you will want to install either webmin or swat. swat is samba's official webpage based config tool makes configuring it by navigating to a internal website though you might need to install apache on the machine too for swat i forget.. Or webmin is alot more powerful you can configure alot of other things and i think its easier to configure samba shares with it no need for apache install has its own mini webserver...Connecting should be pretty much auto simple long as all your pc's are on the same IP network when you go into Nemo file manager not sure how is on Mate desktop probably similar on the left hand paine at the bottom says Network.. Clicking on it will expand then you should be able to see all the computers if not click on Windows Network then select the workgroup then choose the share you want...

[jimnoble]

Apologies for bumping this thread but I'm darned if I can find a way of starting a new one. Perhaps, as a very new member, I'm not allowed to.

I'm running Linux Mint 15 Olivia/Cinnamon on a pentium. My Windows network is a mixture of Windows 7 and XP machines together with a QNAP NAS. All are on the same NCONSULT workgroup and all have shares enabled.

I've told Mint's Samba that the workgroup is NCONSULT and set up shares in Mint. The Windows machines can see these and read/write to them without problem.

smbtree produces a list of all the shares on the workgroup in the Mint machine and on the Windows network.

All good so far so what's the problem? The problem is that there's no Network shortcut on the Mint desktop that lets me browse the network shares. Further, I'm unable to backup to the NAS. If I want to access data from elsewhere on the network, I can work around the problem by using a Windows machine to transfer the file to Mint and back again but this is inconvenient and not ideal (because I prefer shares to be read only).

So what am I missing? Networking used to work fine between Ubuntu and Windows. (I discarded Ubuntu because I loathed Unity and upgraded that machine to Windows 7).

[jimnoble]

What I was missing was awareness of the enable sidebar in the computer display view menu. I can now browse the Windows network just fine.

[Egan001]

Nice post. Really helpful.

[dvanman]

Open Terminal
Type gksu gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

Search for the following entry:

# Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of
workgroup = WORKGROUP

Change workgroup = WORKGROUP
To workgroup = MSHOME

Back in Terminal type: sudo service samba restart

Well, I went to "terminal" and typed in the line you suggested but nothing all I get is the terminal prompt on the next line. There never is a chance to change the WORKGROUP line. So what do you suggest next? I have a network with several XP-Pro and Win-7 machines that can't detect my Linux-Mint machine but the Mint machine can identify all of the Microsoft machines, just cant access their shared drives. All the MS machines share and play nicely together on a WORKGROUP network.

[altair4]

sudo service samba restart

That's for LMDE - and I don't know if that still applies since I no longer use LMDE. This is what it is in Ubuntu/Mint:

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sudo service smbd restart

followed by:

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sudo service nmbd restart

You're going to have to wait a few minutes becasuse of the way smb works before you can try to access anything.

But ... it's unlikely that has anything to do with this:

I have a network with several XP-Pro and Win-7 machines that can't detect my Linux-Mint machine

I'm betting your host name on the Linux box is too long. To fix that and go through other possible issues I'd recommend going through the checklist:
HowTo: Samba Browsing Problems Checklist