samba nightmare

[codeslinger]

Binary package hint: samba

Ubuntu 8.0.4 Hardy Heron Desktop

I have spent *DAYS* trying to get this to work!!!
now my ubuntu system is so badly hosed it looks like I will have to restore from backup.

all I did was uninstall samba and cups and then attempt to reinstall them.
I did this because THEY DONT FRIGGIN WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!

all I want is for the most basic and fundamental of things.... something that SHOULD HAVE WORKED OUT OF THE BOX WITHOUT ADDITIONAL INSTALL REQUIRED....

I want/need to run ubuntu in a mixed environment with windows 98 and windows XP computers. I want and need for those computers to be able to access files and *printers* that are on the ubuntu computer. Why is that so difficult?

I am not a newbe, I know how to check the box that says to "enable sharing" and to "share this printer". too bad it doesn't actually work..... have you tried it on a clean install of ubuntu????

The corruption problems started after I installed gsambad and system-config-samba(?) after that I could no longer open the printing config program on the system/admin menu. after fiddling around for awhile I resorted to removal of samba and cups and the attempt to reinstall them...

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I have tried a lot of linux distros over the years. and I swear by linux for servers. but on the desktop it is a whole other story of endless promise and disappointment. So far ubuntu is the closest I have come to a total linux desktop success, but the fact that it can not out-of-the-box interoperate with other MS Windows computers is a *MAJOR* design flaw. It should not be necessary to install additional software in order to share a printer, it should not be required to read 100+ pages of highly technical docs to get samba file and print sharing to work. every other distro I have tried has successfully done printer and file sharing (sometimes with a battle, but always with a success), where other distros have fallen down is on krappy sound, video and browser support. Ubuntu on the other hand is the first distro I have found that has great!!! sound and , video and browser support, but where it falls flat on it's face is the krappy printer and file sharing *total lack* of support.

Yes, I have Read The Fine Manual, I have checked the appropriate boxes, I have installed the appropriate packages, but after *DAYS* of effort it still does not work. I am not an idiot, but krap like this sure makes me feel like one. I tell you what though, if I can't figure it out, with as much time and knowledge and experience as I have, then it is a sure bet that casual end users of computers are sure as heck not even going to be close to being able to use it.

I want Ubuntu to be a success, You want Ubuntu to be a success, so please fix this mess!

ProblemType: Package
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Jul 24 04:21:43 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ErrorMessage: subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Package: samba-common 3.0.28a-1ubuntu4.4
PackageArchitecture: i386
SourcePackage: samba
Title: package samba-common 3.0.28a-1ubuntu4.4 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic i686

[codeslinger (codeslinger)]

attached is the synaptic package list after installing the additional packages that broke the printer config system.

[codeslinger (codeslinger)]

for comparison,

attached is my synaptic config when everything still basically worked, this was after a successful install (by hand) of vmware.

of course at this point, file and printer sharing is *NOT* working...

and I have not yet attempted to install samba in order to get it to work.

[codeslinger (codeslinger)]

by the way, I am a computer consultant / sysadmin for several different companies. I would like nothing better than to convert those companies to using ubuntu and to avoid Vista altogether.

My samba nightmare is that in one of those companies, their main computer died and I foolishly decided to replace it with ubuntu on the strength of the testing I had already done. Well it has been several days now of high stress effort and I still don't have the printer sharing working.

Oh, ubuntu can print to other printers just fine, but I can't stick a printer on ubuntu and enable other people to access it from MS Windows. Your doc's on this subject are er uh shall we say... *inadequate*. Now, mind you, in the past I've gotten printer sharing to work just fine on other distros, so it was a real shock to not be able to get it to work on ubuntu.

right now my name is mud, and so is ubuntu's....

[Marcus Asshauer (mcas)]

Thank you for reporting this bug. Can you please describe how you reinstall samba and cups? Have you deleted some files manually?

[codeslinger (codeslinger)]

short answer:
Because after installing some packages, my system was malfunctioning with substantial breakage of the printing system, I used the synaptic package manager to uninstall both Samba and CUPS, then I manually deleted/moved the /etc/samba folder to ensure that the configs would be recreated when I reinstalled.

Long answer see below especially item #5.

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as I see it, there are 5 bugs here....

1) There is the design issue with Ubuntu itself. If you want to achieve mass adoption of Ubuntu (which it fully deserves) then it MUST be able to interoperate with MS Windows computers "out of the box". Currently it takes a computer expert in order to be able to install and configure Samba to be able to share printers and files. That has to change, it has to be possible for end users with a minimum of skill to be able to right click on a folder or printer and choose sharing and have it work; and to be able to do this without installing and configuring any additional software.

2) Samba is fundamentally broken. I have now spent *days* searching the web and reading the docs and trying the example configs and I still can't get it to work with Windows 98, I keep getting a password prompt and no matter what I enter it gets rejected. I did not yet find the solution to the problem, but I did find other people complaining about the same problem. I have tried what some people said should work and it does not work for me. Now for comparision, I also have installed Mephis Linux and pcLinuxOS and I was able to get Samba to work on both of those computers, Mephis basically worked out of the box, but Samba tended to crash a lot. pcLinuxOS took a but of fuss to get it working properly but once working it doesn't crash the way that Mephis did and it does work with Win 98. Those distros are old, Mephis is from about 3 or 4 years ago and pcLinuxOS is from about 2 years ago, Ubuntu on the other hand has all the latest and greatest versions of software and for the most part it really is much better than any other of the numerous distros I've tried. But this Samba is royally screwed up and does not work the way it is supposed to. Now quite possibly I missed installing some package or other that Samba needs because after all, with the lack of Ubuntu specific docs on the subject I have had to guess at which packages I need to install.

3) Installing certain packages causes breakage. After I installed and used gsambad and a couple of other packages I could no longer get the printer configuration dialog (system-config-printer) to run/open it would crash instead. This might be related to bug #135321 This is why I ended up uninstalling Samba and CUPS and starting over. Which is what caused bug 5 to occur.

4) (Fit and Finish) The package called "system-config-printer" and the package called "gnome-cups-manager" both create an identical menu entry called system/administration/Printer. These two packages both provide overlapping but not identical functionality, I found it useful to have both installed, they should use different names for their menu entries.

5) This is the crash that caused this bug entry to be created, but this is the ...

[codeslinger (codeslinger)]

I am disappointed by the lack of response to this bug.

But I am happy to report that after several months of automatic updates, I happened to notice that samba had finally and mysteriously started to work... with no changes on my part.

So somebody somewhere fixed something. And for that I am grateful.

As far as the crash which results from the missing config file, since this is not a normal use scenario and since nobody seems interested in this bug anyway, I am going to go ahead and close this.

The bottom line for me is that samba works now with win98, win2k, and win XP.

And the fact that it started working on it's own is proof that I did have it configured properly.

I was going to close this bug but I don't seem to be able to do that...