SMB folder sharing: very unclear error messages

[Emmanuel Touzery]

Binary package hint: nautilus-share

i had SMB sharing working after very little set up (just point and click in gnome) in 9.10.
now after upgrading to 10.04 sharing was not working anymore. in an attempt to troubleshoot i removed the share in nautilus. When I try to add it back, the folder sharing dialog gives this error message:

   'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare add: cannot convert name "Everyone" to a SID. The connection was refused. Maybe smbd is not running.

If I go to System->Preferences->Personal File Sharing, it is written:

    This feature cannot be enabled because the required packages are not installed on your system

But it doesn't say which packages to install. I do have samba installed, and also nautilus-share.

When googling this problem, I found out about the "shares-admin" program. I launched it, and it told me at startup that sharing services are not installed. It offered to install them for SMB and/or NFS. I unticked NFS, clicked "Install services" with SMB enabled. Then it asked for the admin password, but nothing happened and this same window keeps popping up.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: nautilus-share 0.7.2-12build1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun May 2 13:22:06 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus-share

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

well I managed to make it work by changing the UFW configuration as highlighted there:
http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1205867&page=3#28

so i guess it's happening to not so many users since UFW is not installed by default.

Still the error messages are spectacularly unclear (!!!).

Also in System->Preferences->Personal File Sharing it's still written i don't have the necessary packages (while the feature works!) and also in shares-admin it still keeps offering to install the packages and stays in that "infinite loop".

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

On Sunday 02,May,2010 08:07 PM, Emmanuel Touzery wrote:
> well I managed to make it work by changing the UFW configuration as highlighted there:
> http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1205867&page=3#28
>
> so i guess it's happening to not so many users since UFW is not
> installed by default.
>
> Still the error messages are spectacularly unclear (!!!).
>
> Also in System->Preferences->Personal File Sharing it's still written i
> don't have the necessary packages (while the feature works!) and also in
> shares-admin it still keeps offering to install the packages and stays
> in that "infinite loop".
>

"Personal File Sharing" in System->Preferences is something else entirely.
Nautilus-share does not provide a Preferences menu item. I'm thinking it's
probably gnome-user-share.

--
Kind regards,
Chow Loong Jin

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

On Monday 03,May,2010 01:59 AM, Emmanuel Touzery wrote:
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - SMB folder sharing not working
> + SMB folder sharing: very unclear error messages
>
  status confirmed

I think what is needed is to either rip all the messages out from "net" and
parse them into easier-to-understand messages, or to have "net" return
appropriate error codes.

--
Kind regards,
Chow Loong Jin

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

otherwise a much more complicated (and on another package) but probably in the end better solution would be to add to ufw the same firewall blocking scheme as in windows: "UFW has blocked "nautilus" when attempting to connect to this computer [Keep Blocking] [Unblock]".

[AlexGenaud (alexgenaud)]

"very unclear error messages" is an understated description of the root cause: error

On a new Lucid installation, with samba installed, error report is identical to:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1318879

Restarting (not just logging out) does allow me to share a folder via Nautilus. Though, samba reports quite a few error (see thread above) when starting.

I am not sure the minimal steps to get it working, I basically tried everything I could find in the forums, such as:
http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7600170

[Aleksey (mav77-)]

I have similar problem.
After upgrading Ubuntu from 9.10 to 10.04 sharing commands was not working properly.
I can't share throw context menu in Nautilus - have same error as is in bag descrition.
Also I can't share throw command line:

    net usershare add NAME PATH USER

I get error:

    'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare add: cannot convert name "USER" to a SID. The connection was refused.
    Maybe smbd is not running.

But i can sharing throw command line without additional parameters:

    net usershare add NAME PATH

Samba service and network sharing working properly (exclude adding sharing throw command and context menu).
Also i can manualy edit smb.conf or create/delete share-config in /var/lib/samba/usershares - all will be work.

I try UFW enable and disable - this not help. Also i have instaled all needed package (i think).

Also befor upgrading Ubuntu i have group "sambashares" for /var/lib/samba/usershares, but after upgrading this group was reset to root ??? I do not know why.

Linux 2.6.32-22-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 28 13:27:30 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

----------------------
May be this information will be help.

[Joseph Harriott (ttoirrah)]

Since some automatic Lucid updates yesterday, Nautilus refusing to create shares thusly:

'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare add: cannot convert name "Everyone" to a SID. The connection was refused. Maybe smbd is not running.

I can still access my windows shared folders from Lucid but all of my nautilus shares now don't work and can't be got to work.

smbd -V reports Version 3.4.7

I executed command shares-admin and followed suggestion to install NFS and SMB, no improvement.

Ubuntu Software Centre > Samba 1.2.63 didn't fix things either.

Similar thing happened 4wks ago. I kept reverting back to a working fsa images of the system and re-installing updates. After a day or two something had changed in the updates and everything was back to normal again.

For now, this time round, I can't see how to fix this. Workaround for me is as before to forget about nautilus-share functionality for a while, and keep reverting back to an fsa image that worked, in the hope that something changes in the automatic Lucid updates again, and Nautilus' handy sharing functionality works again.

[Joseph Harriott (ttoirrah)]

oh, and disabling ufw doesn't allow nautilus shares to be created either.

[Joseph Harriott (ttoirrah)]

Okay, nautilus-share is working again for me. I used fsarchiver on SystemRescueCd to go back one step further to an earlier stable fsa system image than my most recent one, and began rebuilding my software environment from there, and it's all working fine. I've no idea how I'd have fixed this if otherwise.