Samba sharing will not work[SOLVED]

[mdavies5]

I am experienced Linux user and I have read many posts on this problem. I have installed SAMBA, nemo-share and gnome-system-tools. Using the latter I can create a samba user and shares. When I use Nemo to browse the network I get "Nemo cannot handle "network" locations".
When I try to view the sharing options on any folder the form is disabled with the message: "Samba needs to be installed, and your user account need to join the 'sambashare' group." with a link to 'Install'. Samba is installed and I am in the sambashare group so clicking the 'Install link does nothing.
For test purposes I am connecting to Peppermint on an old laptop; I have no need to connect to a Windows machine.
On the Mint machine I can also boot to Debian9 on which Samba is not installed but. by default, 3 samba files are installed (samba-libs, libsmbclient & libwbclient). In debian9 I can see the Peppermint machine and copy files back and forth. I should mention that Peppermint also uses Nemo and it can call the Mint machine using smb://192.168.0.102 and it shows the shared printer but not any of the shared folders.
I hope I have explained this clearly, it is really puzzling me.

[altair4]

Your symptoms are all over the map. It doesn't help that Mint made a mess of things when they decided not to install the samba server by default.

"Nemo cannot handle "network" locations".

Sounds like a missing package so install it:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install gvfs-backends

Samba needs to be installed ...

Install it the Ubuntu way:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install samba --install-recommends

See if that resolves anything.

If not please post the output of the following commands:

Code: Select all

testparm -s

Code: Select all

net usershare info --long

Side note: Given the other machines on your network I would suggest you do this on all of them: viewtopic.php?f=157&t=185410#p960482

[mdavies5]

Thanks Altair,
I installed gvfs and ran testparm. This showed me that my smb.conf has my share marked as NOT available and NOT browseable. This entry was created by the Gnome Utilities "Share Folders" utility where it is not possible to set all these options.
I corrected the smb.conf and my Mint could be seen from other computers. After a reboot Nemo could run smb ok.
The only thing that puzzles me is how Debian9 achieves this out of the box with only a few samba clients libs and no smb.conf; I will check further just to satisfy my curiosity.