Solved? Shares access from windows 8/8.1

[João Cardoso]

[Copied from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/uDks1vuqozw/j8G8dBfiRDYJ on bealf of Matthew Potgieter]

Hi,

I'm in a spot of bother with a similar problem, and hope that you could assist me to sort it out.

I am trying to be as detailed as possible, and know that it is a bit long winded, but I have tried to give you the info you might need to spot where I am making an obvious error.

Background

We had power problems, and one of our drives on our DNS-323 Rev.A crashed. It was in RAID1 running the Stock firmware. 1.10 I think it was. The other drive was flagged as dirty and was put into read only mode. I tried to run the repair option but it kept failing. I pulled the drives out and inserted them into a desktop and booted into a Ubuntu Flash Drive and mounted RAID1 through mdadm. Wored. Tried to rebuild the RAID array. Failed every time. I pulled the faulty drive, remounted RAID with the single working drive and ran fsck. Lots of errors and bad sectors found! 

I went and got two Seagate NAS HDD's so that I could just start fresh and not risk running on faulty drives. ( Seagate ST2000VN000-1HJ164 - 2.0TB  x  2). I then discovered the 4K sector problem. I admit that I didn't even think to check online about compatibility. D-Link firmware 1.10.7 is apparently supposed to be able to format the 2TB HDD's even with 4K sectoring... No. It didn't! Froze every time. And I tried a few times.

I then found ALT-F. 

I installed Alt-F-0.1RC4.1-DNS-323-rev-A1B1C1.bin setup RAID1 and all went smothly. Format, Sync, users, folders. All a breeze, and so easy to do. I saved the settings, and then found that I couldn't see the shares in Windows.

Problem

I have tested every way I could think of to get to the files in Windows and thus far have been stonewalled for the most part. I can ping the DNS-323. I can get into the web gui. I can resolve the hostname via DNS... But I can't see the shares. I have read through the other posts in this topic and have not found a resolution thus far.

What I have tried:

I have checked that the workgroup is the same name. It is.

I have turned the firewall on and off in Windows 8.1

I have tried another laptop. Also Windows 8.1

I have checked that I am working on a Private network in Network and Sharing Centre

I have tried to go there via the unc path \\192.168.40.50 and \\192.168.40.50\Enviro_Docs

I have tried to map a drive with the path as another user said to do. Nope

I have made sure that SAMBA was running in ALT-F

I also tried to reflash the firmware and delete all the settings as another user suggested - Partial success

To elaborate on the partial success... I then redid the setup exactly as I had done before (Public folders and Users folder  mappings were in the wind though, but I remapped them). Tried again, and after an eternal wait for \\192.168.40.50 the folders appeared. I had some permission problems of my own making, but I could at least see the folders. It was however far to slow to be usable at the office. Each time you tried to browse to the shares you had to wait about 30 - 40 seconds for it to connect!

I tried to downgrade to  Alt-F-0.1RC4-DNS-323-rev-A1B1C1.bin browsing gone again.

I reflashed back to D-Link firmware 1.10 hoping to use the newly setup RAID on that firmware - D-Link didn't see the RAID and brought up the new drive / what do you want to format them as menu...

I loaded Alt-F-0.1RC3-DNS-323.bin hoping that going backwards would sort my problem out. Same old, same oldHi,

I have now reloaded Alt-F-0.1RC4.1-DNS-323-rev-A1B1C1.bin and am in search of help.

I tried D-Link firmware 1.7 , 1.8 , 1.9 , 1.10 , 1.10.7 Formatting fails for RAID1 or even without RAID.

I have now reloaded Alt-F-0.1RC4.1-DNS-323-rev-A1B1C1.bin and am in search of help please.

Process I followed to setup the latest installation.

Installed from 1.10

installed Alt-F-0.1RC4.1-DNS-323-rev-A1B1C1.bin

Set static IP to 192.168.40.50

Set Domain to WORKGROUP

Setup RAID1. (ST2000VN000-1HJ164 - 2.0TB  x  2)

Create user matthew

Create new share /mnt/md0/Enviro_Docs

Duplicated the permissions from /mnt/md0/Public/RW

Set Allow to Anybody

Set Browse to yes

Set Inherit Perm to yes

Left Workgroup as WORKGROUP

Waited for RAID1 to Sync.

Made sure that SAMBA is enabled - Yes

Tested - Nope.

Restarted all services, tested - Nope.

Rebooted, tested - Nope.

Reflashed the firmware, but kept the settings this time. Nope, that didn't work.

Closing

I have told my boss that I would have it sorted for Monday morning, and am sweating bullets. Any help would be immensely appreciated!

Thanks,

Matthew.

[João Cardoso]

[Copied from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/uDks1vuqozw/zN0Jmg5HAOUJ}

I don't think that you have done any error. Your setup is pretty standard and after the first login wizard you should be able to see the box and its samba shares.

You might have a problem with win8/8.1, as some users have reported issues with it (but also other users have reported that it works fine). To be sure that your setup is not win8 related, try a linux samba client. If you don't have a linux machine, try some android or mac samba clients, I didn't found any that does not works OK with Alt-F (most android file explorers have a samba client).

The "partial" success you describe bellow might be due to caching or timing issues -- several minutes might be needed for win to acknowledge/forget CIFS/SMB changes. The 30/40 seconds delay might be related to IP network issues, try using a DHCP server instead of a static IP. And try using the box IP instead of its name? Sorry, I'm not an windows user.

[João Cardoso]

[Copied from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/uDks1vuqozw/Y_uCDa_Tcv8J]

Hi João,

Thanks for your quick reply. Ok, I have done some testing as you suggested and I can access the shares via Android as long as I tick the box to use anonymous access. On Ubuntu 14.10 I cannot connect or ever see the shared folders. smb://192.168.40.50 was what I used...

I have been checking on other forums for similar problems, and one suggested that they had found that the Windows 8.1 and some of their other devices were expecting the connection to be incoming on port 445 and not port 443... Now I would like to check this, but don't know how to go about it. Could you guide me as to how I can edit and check the smb.comf file please. Do I need to install the Alt-F Package Manager or ffp Package Manager? Do I then SSH to the IP or is there some otherway to do it. And also where is smb.conf located? I found the above at http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1233265-cannot-access-smb-network-shares-on-windows-81/page-1

Matthew

[João Cardoso]

[Copied from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/uDks1vuqozw/ab5onWC-_7IJ]

Hi João,

Ok, I drove to my father in-laws house and tested on his Windows 7 laptop... Worked instantly. Passwords, browsing, permissions, the lot. :-)

I have subsequently done some more reading and testing and have finally got it working I Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

There were many registry hacks that were recommended, but what finally worked was nice and simple.

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools

Open "Local Security Policy"

Expand...

Local Policies

Security Options

Microsoft network client: Send unencrypted password to third-party SMB server   --> Enable

Save, Close, Done!

All working. I have tested this on two computers and all is now working, and the 30 - 40 second delay is now also a thing of the past.

Thanks João for your willingness to assist when help is needed. Much obliged.

Matthew.

[João Cardoso]

On Sunday, 31 May 2015 15:47:43 UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

[Copied from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/uDks1vuqozw/ab5onWC-_7IJ]

Hi João,

Ok, I drove to my father in-laws house and tested on his Windows 7 laptop... Worked instantly. Passwords, browsing, permissions, the lot. :-)

I have subsequently done some more reading and testing and have finally got it working I Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

There were many registry hacks that were recommended, but what finally worked was nice and simple.

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools

Open "Local Security Policy"

Expand...

Local Policies

Security Options

Microsoft network client: Send unencrypted password to third-party SMB server   --> Enable

Although this works I don't think it to be a proper and final solution.

The samba server configuration file, /etc/samba/smb.conf, says:

  encrypt passwords = yes

 passdb backend = smbpasswd

 security = user

Perhaps MS has changed the way how passwords are encrypted in win-8/8.1, and the (old) Alt-F Samba server does not recognize it. But there must exists a way to tell win8/8.1 to use the previous win6/7 way of encrypting passwords, instead of sending them in the clear?

Notice that Alt-F only supports local smbpasswd files, not any other.

Excerpts from the smb.conf manual page (if you search it for 'encrypt' you will find 54 references)

      encrypt passwords (G)

           This boolean controls whether encrypted passwords will be negotiated with the client. Note

           that Windows NT 4.0 SP3 and above and also Windows 98 will by default expect encrypted

           passwords unless a registry entry is changed. To use encrypted passwords in Samba see the

           chapter "User Database" in the Samba HOWTO Collection.

           MS Windows clients that expect Microsoft encrypted passwords and that do not have plain

           text password support enabled will be able to connect only to a Samba server that has

           encrypted password support enabled and for which the user accounts have a valid encrypted

           password. Refer to the smbpasswd command man page for information regarding the creation

           of encrypted passwords for user accounts.

           The use of plain text passwords is NOT advised as support for this feature is no longer

           maintained in Microsoft Windows products. If you want to use plain text passwords you must

           set this parameter to no.

           In order for encrypted passwords to work correctly smbd(8) must either have access to a

           local smbpasswd(5) file (see the smbpasswd(8) program for information on how to set up and

           maintain this file), or set the security = [domain|ads] parameter which causes smbd to

           authenticate against another server.

           Default: encrypt passwords = yes

       passdb backend (G)

           This option allows the administrator to chose which backend will be used for storing user

           and possibly group information. This allows you to swap between different storage

           mechanisms without recompile.

           The parameter value is divided into two parts, the backend's name, and a 'location' string

           that has meaning only to that particular backed. These are separated by a : character.

           Available backends can include:

           ·   smbpasswd - The old plaintext passdb backend. Some Samba features will not work if

               this passdb backend is used. Takes a path to the smbpasswd file as an optional

               argument.

           ·   tdbsam - The TDB based password storage backend. Takes a path to the TDB as an

               optional argument (defaults to passdb.tdb in the private dir directory.

           ·   ldapsam - The LDAP based passdb backend. Takes an LDAP URL as an optional argument

               (defaults to ldap://localhost)

               LDAP connections should be secured where possible. This may be done using either

               Start-TLS (see ldap ssl) or by specifying ldaps:// in the URL argument.

               Multiple servers may also be specified in double-quotes. Whether multiple servers are

               supported or not and the exact syntax depends on the LDAP library you use.

            Examples of use are:

           passdb backend = tdbsam:/etc/samba/private/passdb.tdb

           or multi server LDAP URL with OpenLDAP library:

           passdb backend = ldapsam:"ldap://ldap-1.example.com ldap://ldap-2.example.com"

           or multi server LDAP URL with Netscape based LDAP library:

           passdb backend = ldapsam:"ldap://ldap-1.example.com ldap-2.example.com"

       Default: passdb backend = tdbsam