Impossible to correctly use Samba Shares on a NAS with Ubuntu

[Bobbix]

I've a NAS with samba server and there are no problems if i use it from a windows xp client.

With Ubuntu Hardy, i search the shares with nautilus, i find them in the workgroup and i mount them also, but... after few minutes i lost the connection, even if i use the mounted share (e.g.: transferring data to/from the NAS).

I get some errors by the applications when using files stored on the NAS server.
The system say that are no applications for open the file (mime: octet-stream).
I've tried to add the ip address of the NAS in my /etc/hosts file and /etc/lmhosts file, and i've tried to associate type octet-stram with application "Open Folder" in Nautilus.

Now i seem to have reduced the problem, so i get no data from the share after some minutes (like a timeout) but i no get the others errors and messages.
To get back the connection i now i have to refresh/recall many times the shares with nautilus.

Using the share on a samba server of another Ubuntu box, i have no problem, other than the error i get when i make the bookmark (the same message i get when i bookmark the NAS shares, sorry i have no data for posting exactly the message now).

Any idea?

[Mathias Gug (mathiaz)]

On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 07:18:14AM -0000, Bobbix wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> I've a NAS with samba server and there are no problems if i use it from
> a windows xp client.
>
> With Ubuntu Hardy, i search the shares with nautilus, i find them in the
> workgroup and i mount them also, but... after few minutes i lost the
> connection, even if i use the mounted share (e.g.: transferring data
> to/from the NAS).

Are you able to connect to the NAS server using smbclient from the command
line ?

 status incomplete

--
Mathias Gug
Ubuntu Developer http://www.ubuntu.com

[Bobbix (r-lenti)]

Yes i'm able to connect with smbclient from command line. The connection seem be stable.

Now i've added the ip address of my NAS (master browser in my network) in the /etc/resolv.conf file ad seem to work fine now into nautilus (but i've to make other tests using the shares for many purposes).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report. what is "nas"? could you describe easy steps to trigger the bug?

[Rick Clark (dendrobates)]

Seb,

NAS Stands for Network Attached Storage. They are usually accessed with smb, and/or nfs.

[Mathias Gug (mathiaz)]

Closing the samba task since smbclient is working correctly.

Which model of NAS are you using ?

[Bobbix (r-lenti)]

Thanks to all.
I'm using a Lindy NAS dual RAID with samba server version 3.0.20 (i see the version typing "smbclient -L nasname").
I'm accessing the nas with samba, i'm sure becouse i've disabled NFS server in the NAS settings, leaving enebled only samba server.

My news:
If i open a connection with the NAS typing in a terminal: "smbclient //nasname/sharename -U=myusername" and i type my password correctly, i'm able to browse the contents of the share but... after only few minutes the connection go down with this message "Read from server failed, maybe it closed the connection", it's like a timeout, now i can only give ctrl+c and request the connection again because the message repeat every about 5 seconds.
The problem it's like the phenomen i see in Nautilus, so after mounting the share, i'm able to browse immediatly all files but, after few minutes, if i don't use the share and i don't refresh the share content, i get this error popup "Non è possibile mostrare <<smb//nasname/sharename/>> Errore nessun dato disponibile Selezionare un altro visualizzatore e tentare di nuovo." (Translated: "Impossible to display <<smb//nasname/sharename/>> Error no data available Select another viewer and try again).
After this popup, if i try to refresh some times, the connection go up again for another amount of time, and again, if i don't use the connection for some time, i get again the same popup error........

I don'r have all this problems browsing another samba server an a ubuntu computer (because same version?)

I hope this information can be helpful.
Bobbix.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

reopening the samba task since smbclient has similar issues

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

I believe, I am experiencing a similar issue. My NAS[1] is a very cheap box that is apparently based on the RDC R2882-G chip[2]. I found a report on the net of another Linux user who owns a NAS box with the same chip who was having similar problems to those I experienced[3]. He apparently managed to get things going by simply installing the forgotten smbfs package. Unfortunately, in my case, smbfs had already been installed so that was no fix for me. I still experienced difficulties similar to those reported here. En detail:

* Browsing of the Samba share via Nautilus works fine. But sometimes the connection becomes unresponsive after a few minutes.
   I attributed this to a timed suspend function for the hard drive in the case. This is not my main concern
* smbclient -L mynas works and spits out the following (strange characters included)
   Password:
   Domain=[ȇ] OS=[] Server=[���]

 Sharename Type Comment
 --------- ---- -------
 PUBLIC Disk
 IPC$ IPC
   Domain=[ȇ] OS=[] Server=[���]

 Server Comment
 --------- -------

 Workgroup Master
 --------- -------
* Inspired by this bug, I found out that I can also use smbclient to connect directly and that works fine, too.
   $ smbclient //mynas/PUBLIC
   Password:
   Domain=[ȇ] OS=[] Server=[���]
   smb: \>
* mounting, though, does not. And that is a problem for me.
   $ sudo mount -t smbfs //mynas/PUBLIC /mnt/test
   Password:
   mount error 20 = Not a directory
   Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs)
   $ sudo mount -t cifs //mynas/PUBLIC /mnt/test
   Password:
   mount error 20 = Not a directory
   Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs)

Notes:
[1] http://oss.leggewie.org/nas/ and http://www.pyrogate.de/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=62
[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20061009090701/http://www.rdc.com.tw/eng/product_more.asp?pid=85
[3] http://ts.hastu.net/node/6

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Hurra, I believe I just found the solution at least to my problem with mounting the NAS at all. The box does not understand the Unix extensions, thus "sudo mount -t smbfs //mynas/PUBLIC /mnt/test -o nounix" manages to mount the share, at least. Am I correct to assume that any CIFS share not provided by a Linux host has to be mounted with the nounix option?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's not a nautilus bug

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Bobbix, any improvement recently?

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

We'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you, but we haven't heard back from you in a while. Could you please provide the requested information? Thanks!

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!