Samba installation - Fedora 11

[Jonathan_Wexler]

I am trying to install Fedora 11 (x86-64) and set up Samba for my home LAN (no domain controller).
I had set up Samba on Fedora 6, so I thought I could manage this.

I have tried this with several different kits (several times, with much the same result). I have read half-a-dozen sets of instructions. I feel like I am missing somthing simple but, I have run out of ideas.

So I
(1) installed Fedora 11, giving ithe system the name 'franky'
(2) enabled networking,
(3) did yum install samba (and samba-client, samba-common and system-config-samba)
(4) edited the firewall setting to trust samba, edited SeLinux settins to allow Samba to share
(5) edited /etc/samba/smb.conf (WINS server on, no DNS resolution, set workgroup name, netbios name), and
(6) enabled and started both nmbd and smbd in the Administration/Services panel.
(7) did MKDIR /var/run/samba (some post suggested this could be relevant)
( checked that etc/services had the proper entries for protocols 137,138 and 139


My issue is that I am having no luck getting NETBIOS names set up, let alone file sharing with Windows/Linux computers on my network.

Symptons/observations

A) Firefox (and yum, for that matter) can get to the Internet and resolves Internet names, so I know the router it is connected to is giving it a good IPv4 address (but Linux seems to be working hard to find a funky value for "nameserver" - see below)
B) the router log shows a blank area where I would expect the NETBIOS name for the unit
C) I can ping numeric IPs to or from the unit to other computers on the LAN, but the name resolution stuff does not work in either direction. However, something
is getting through to Samba from incoming ping requests (I see an entry in /var/log/samba for log.dad-gateway, which is the NETBIOS name of one
of the machines on the LAN - the entry is zero bytes - or I do not know how to read it)
D) On the Linux box, I can ping localhost, 127.0.0.1, but not franky
E) The scripts in etc/init.d claims smbd and nmbd are running (which is good because I do not see these processes lised in Applications...System Monitor ..... Processes - who thought that was a good idea)
F) Cannot run SWAT (none of localhost:901, franky:901 or 127.0.0.1:901 work)
G) the message log has a lot of entries, only two of which seem anamolous
i) nmbd(1632) create-submnets: waiting for an interface to appear
ii) Network Manager <info> nameserver hsd1.ma.comcast.net - if Linux is using this for Netbios resolution, no wonder nothing works - by the
way, this value must be coming from the DNS servers from my ISP (Comcast); it is not available in the router. A web search indicates that "hsd1.ma.comcast.net" is a domain controlled by three nameservers at comcast.net. All of them are on different IP networks.

H) the NSTAT command exits after a single line which reads

tcp 0 0 :::445 :::% LISTEN

J) chkconfig -- list shows smb and nmb are "on" at levels 2345 (whatever that means)
K) smbclient -L localhost returns "'client lanman auth' is disabled"

Any help appreciated.

Jonathan

[glennzo]

I think you're over complicating things. Any time you make a change to smb.conf you need to restart samba. You should also run testparm to make sure there are no errors with smb.conf.

su -c '/sbin/service smb restart'
su -c '/sbin/service nmb restart'

I suggest that you disable SELinux for the time being. Get Samba working and then enable it if you like. Could you post the content of your smb.conf file here?

[Jonathan_Wexler]

Thanks for the reply

testparm looked fine
system-config-selinux to set to "not enforcing" did not change anything
the restarts did not change anything
smb.conf attached (as .txt file)

[glennzo]

And here's my proposed smb.conf back at you. Try replacing yours with mine and see if things work any better. Remove the printer section if you aren't sharing a printer that is attached to this computer. Remember to restart smb and nmb.

[Jonathan_Wexler]

No joy. same results.

[ironwilliamcash]

Did you create your samba users? You have to create individual users who can connect to the samba client.
Use this to do so :

# smbpasswd –a username

Replace username by the user you want to create, it will then prompt you for the password.


Also:
you might want to uncomment the hosts allow line in your samba.conf

Hope it helps

[Jonathan_Wexler]

Creating samba users had no impact (not surprising to me, as it seems that the failure is occuring
well before any credentials could be presented.

[rituraj.goswami]

please pass the actual errors that were generated.

[glennzo]

Add entries in /etc/hosts for all the computers on the network and see if it helps. Remember to restart smb and nmb.

[Jonathan_Wexler]

I added an entry to the lmhosts.sam file on a windows box, and got samba working

I think I will start a new thread in another forum to try to get the NETBIOS name resolution fixed

Thanks for everyone's help.

Jonathan