UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I can't help with GUIs, I have never used any of them. For samba, I have used swat and would still recommend it as the best UI.

No passwords, and no windows support for NFS( you have to use samba for that). You need to make sure the nfs server is running and that you have exported to the required hosts. Authentication is by local user and/or remote machine identity, and hence why the uids need to be the same on every machine ( unless using a compatible network naming service )

I would set this up and tell you what I has to do, but I don't have any Linux boxes at the moment.

cifs != nfs Are you sure that NFS is involved here? Try "mount.cifs -V" on both distros. According to the Debian website, sarge is still the latest stable release. Since you're having trouble with etch, maybe you should try sarge.

I don't use cifs and cannot test it, but I don't understand why you have cifs working at all. The man page says you need "user=someone password=something" or "credentials=filename" or a user/password combo in an environment variable. How are you providing the password?

The NFS things came up when I suggested making a machine which is able to mount the CIFS into a nfs<->cifs gateway, and appears to have confused the situation even more.

Perderabo, in linux you can do something like this. I have always used smbfs, not cifs as the argument but it appears either will work.

Code:

mount -t smbfs -o username=reborg,password=pa$$w0rd,uid=reborg,gid=staff //host/share /mountpoint

or

Code:

mount -t smbfs -o username=reborg,uid=reborg,gid=staff //host/share /mountpoint

In the latter case the user will be prompted for the password.

I have a fedora 6 (a virtual VMware guest node), ubuntu 6.10 (a PC), unslung 6.8 (a linksys NAS controller), debian etch (a virtual VMware guest node) and windows node (a host VMware node).

I have not tried making the unslung a NFS controller because it doe not have a nice GUI to do so.

Question #1A: How to access smb shares from root accounts? As the root account on fedora I say

mount -t cifs \\\\10.169.0.136\\siegfried /mnt/etch -o uid=siegfried,username=siegfried

This prompts me for a password. I can browse the directories but cannot read or write the files from root. Why not?

Question #1B: How to access smb shares from non-root accounts? As the root account on any linux node on my network I can

mount -t cifs \\\\10.169.1.10\\DISK\ 2 /mnt/LKGD7F73A -o uid=siegfried

10.169.1.10 is a linksys NAS controller running a linux distro called unslung.

I can read and write files from the root account only. I can only browse directories from the siegfried account. I need to be able to read and write files from the siegfried account.


Question #2: Why can no one see the samba and nfs shares on fedora node? I have restarted the SMB and NFS servers using the GUI. I have run smbpasswd. I have stopped the firewalls (which is transparent anyway). When I run places->network servers I see ubuntu, windows, unslung and etch but no fedora. Why not?

Question #3: When I am on debian-etch, I can use places->network servers and, with no password, read and write files on ubuntu by double clicking on the files, bringing up open office, modifying the file and writing a new file. Why don't I need a password? Why does this mount command fail:

mount -t cifs \\\\10.169.0.128\\judy_smb /mnt/fasolt_judy -o username=judy,uid=siegfried
Password:
mount error 13 = Permission denied
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs)


Question #4: Why does not NFS ever work from anything? I have created NFS shares, restarted nfs servers. They don't show up in places->network servers. Commands like the following don't work:

mount -t nfs \\\\10.169.0.128\\siegfried_nfs /mnt/fasolt -o username=siegfried,uid=siegfried
mount: directory to mount not in host:dir format

I have used the GIU to create a NFS share called siegfried_nfs. I don't think a fire wall is the problem here because I can get thru with samba using places->network servers.

So what do I need to do to make NFS work?

I think that is enough questions for now.

Thanks everyone for your support!
Siegfried

I just made a little progress. From debian etch I can now see the samba shares using smbclient. This is a result of editing /etc/samba/smb.conf and setting 'public=yes' on the fedora node. Now the fedora node shows up in the windows explorer and the smbclient command but not the places->network servers from debian-etch. Why not?

How do I change the domain from mygroup to workgroup?

Thanks,
siegfried

ETCHRC4:/dev# smbclient -L 10.169.0.127 -N
Anonymous login successful
Domain=[MYGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.24-1.fc6]

Sharename Type Comment
--------- ---- -------
siegfried_smb Printer siegfried's files
IPC$ IPC IPC Service (Samba Server)
Anonymous login successful
Domain=[MYGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.24-1.fc6]

Server Comment
--------- -------
LOCALHOST Samba Server

Workgroup Master
--------- -------
MYGROUP
ETCHRC4:/dev# mount -t cifs \\\\10.169.0.127\\siegfried_smb /mnt/fedora -o uid=siegfried,username=siegfried
Password:
retrying with upper case share name
mount error 6 = No such device or address
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs)
ETCHRC4:/dev#