How to make shares on Pi running Bookworm appear in Windows

[Jesper Kaas]

Raspberrypi 5 running updated bookworm.

Moving files between Windows and Pi'es was easy with VNC, but VNC
server is gone in Bookworm. Moving files between Windows and Pi *can*
be done with SCP, but everytime I have to check how to write the
command corretly. Bad memory.

Just to make it clear: My windows shares work fine between a Win11 PC,
Win10 laptop and Android phone. Also when I was running Ubuntu, the
Windows shares could be reached from Ubuntus filemanager.

So how to either make shares in Pi visible in Windows, or opposite (or
both ways)?
I have googled til I am blue in the face and tried umpteen recipies,
but nothing works. Samba is installed on Pi, and smb.conf edited in a
number of ways.

Off topic: The Pi 5 replaced a Pi 4 this friday, both 8 Gb. Just
plugged the boot USB from the 4 to the 5. Big difference when
web-browsing. With the Pi 4 you had to be a bit patient. The 5 feels
almost like a PC.


--
Jesper Kaas - jes...@neindanke.online.no

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 05/02/2024 12:11, Jesper Kaas wrote:
> Raspberrypi 5 running updated bookworm.
>
> Moving files between Windows and Pi'es was easy with VNC, but VNC
> server is gone in Bookworm. Moving files between Windows and Pi *can*
> be done with SCP, but everytime I have to check how to write the
> command corretly. Bad memory.
>
> Just to make it clear: My windows shares work fine between a Win11 PC,
> Win10 laptop and Android phone. Also when I was running Ubuntu, the
> Windows shares could be reached from Ubuntus filemanager.
>
> So how to either make shares in Pi visible in Windows, or opposite (or
> both ways)?

Samba. sshfs.

> I have googled til I am blue in the face and tried umpteen recipies,
> but nothing works. Samba is installed on Pi, and smb.conf edited in a
> number of ways.
>

Well it always used to work. Maybe windows latest has made it harder to
do. Remember to reload samba after configuration changes

> Off topic: The Pi 5 replaced a Pi 4 this friday, both 8 Gb. Just
> plugged the boot USB from the 4 to the 5. Big difference when
> web-browsing. With the Pi 4 you had to be a bit patient. The 5 feels
> almost like a PC.
>
>

--

"When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics."

Josef Stalin

[Andy Burns]

Jesper Kaas wrote:

> Moving files between Windows and Pi'es was easy with VNC

If you don't need the full samba server, and are happy for a similar
method to using VNC, then try winSCP on windows.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2024 12:40:43 +0000 (GMT)
Bob Latham <b...@sick-of-spam.invalid> wrote:

> [root]
> comment = root
> path = /
> writeable = yes
> only guest = no
> directory mask = 0777
> create mask = 0777
> force user = root
> force group = root
> public = no
> follow symlinks = yes
> wide links = yes

So anyone with the pi password can mount the share, after which
anyone with access to the machine has root access to the filesystem on the
pi. That's a little open for my tastes.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
For forms of government let fools contest
Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

[Jesper Kaas]

On Mon, 5 Feb 2024 12:43:36 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
<t...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>On 05/02/2024 12:11, Jesper Kaas wrote:
>> Raspberrypi 5 running updated bookworm.
>>
>> Moving files between Windows and Pi'es was easy with VNC, but VNC
>> server is gone in Bookworm. Moving files between Windows and Pi *can*
>> be done with SCP, but everytime I have to check how to write the
>> command corretly. Bad memory.
>>
>> Just to make it clear: My windows shares work fine between a Win11 PC,
>> Win10 laptop and Android phone. Also when I was running Ubuntu, the
>> Windows shares could be reached from Ubuntus filemanager.
>>
>> So how to either make shares in Pi visible in Windows, or opposite (or
>> both ways)?
>
>Samba. sshfs.

Tried to follow a recipe om phoenixNAP, but could not make it work.
I will try Bob Lathams list.

>
>> I have googled til I am blue in the face and tried umpteen recipies,
>> but nothing works. Samba is installed on Pi, and smb.conf edited in a
>> number of ways.
>>
>Well it always used to work. Maybe windows latest has made it harder to
>do. Remember to reload samba after configuration changes
>
>
>> Off topic: The Pi 5 replaced a Pi 4 this friday, both 8 Gb. Just
>> plugged the boot USB from the 4 to the 5. Big difference when
>> web-browsing. With the Pi 4 you had to be a bit patient. The 5 feels
>> almost like a PC.
>>
>>
--

Jesper Kaas - jes...@neindanke.online.no

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 05/02/2024 15:23, Jesper Kaas wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Feb 2024 12:43:36 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
> <t...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 05/02/2024 12:11, Jesper Kaas wrote:
>>> Raspberrypi 5 running updated bookworm.
>>>
>>> Moving files between Windows and Pi'es was easy with VNC, but VNC
>>> server is gone in Bookworm. Moving files between Windows and Pi *can*
>>> be done with SCP, but everytime I have to check how to write the
>>> command corretly. Bad memory.
>>>
>>> Just to make it clear: My windows shares work fine between a Win11 PC,
>>> Win10 laptop and Android phone. Also when I was running Ubuntu, the
>>> Windows shares could be reached from Ubuntus filemanager.
>>>
>>> So how to either make shares in Pi visible in Windows, or opposite (or
>>> both ways)?
>>
>> Samba. sshfs.
> Tried to follow a recipe om phoenixNAP, but could not make it work.
> I will try Bob Lathams list.

Not all windows distros used to accept shares 'out of the box'
Some needed tweaking.

Make sure smb and nmb daemons are running


--
"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
and understanding".

Marshall McLuhan

[Christian Vanguers]

Hello The!

05 Feb 24 12:43, you wrote to Jesper Kaas:

TP> On 05/02/2024 12:11, Jesper Kaas wrote:
>> So how to either make shares in Pi visible in Windows, or opposite
>> (or both ways)?

TP> Samba. sshfs.

NFSv4 would be a good choice

To do that make sure you have NFS Client (Services for NFS) installed from
Programs and Features.
Then mount the NFS drive using this cmd (not PowerShell) command

mount \<IP_ADDRESS>\<PATH_TO_DIR>\ drive:



Christian

[Jesper Kaas]

On 05.02.2024 13:40, Bob Latham wrote:
> In article <b9i1si5d29po80doe...@4ax.com>,

> Jesper Kaas <jes...@neitakk.online.no> wrote:
>
>> So how to either make shares in Pi visible in Windows,
>
>

> My notes: This works for me and is well tested on bookworm.
> Hope there are clues for you there.
> It shares the root so you can see the lot.
>
>
> sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin
>
> sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
>
> In the [global] area make sure you have ;
>
> workgroup = WORK GROUP
>
> unix extensions = no
>
>
> Comment out using # anything in [homes] even [homes] itself
> to prevent unwanted 'pi' share. eg.
>
> #[homes]
> # comment = Home Directories
> # browseable = no
> # read only = yes
> # create mask = 0700
> # directory mask = 0700
> # valid users = %S
>
> Then Print$ as that too shows a share on fileBrowser iPad.
>
> #[print$]
> # comment = Printer Drivers
> # path = /var/lib/samba/printers
> # browseable = yes
> # read only = yes
> # guest ok = no
>
> Then, just above [printers] in the share definitions...
> Add the following 14 lines...
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> # The following added to share the root.

>
> [root]
> comment = root
> path = /
> writeable = yes
> only guest = no
> directory mask = 0777
> create mask = 0777
> force user = root
> force group = root
> public = no
> follow symlinks = yes
> wide links = yes

> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> Save back the file Cntrl-X, Y, <ret>
>
>
> Set the share password
> ======================
>
> sudo smbpasswd -a pi
> enter password for pi user twice.
>
> sudo systemctl restart smbd
>
> 'root' connection should now connect from a PC.
>
>
> Done.
>
Yes! That did it.
With the above setup I, on the laptop, can see shares on the
raspberrypi, and move files between windows and raspios. Pobabaly also
works on the Win11 PC, but that is occupied at the moment,so can't test.

By the way: Before trying the above, I installed TigerVNC Server on
raspberrypi. Then I could get the raspi up in RealVNC Viewer on the
laptop. But there are no possibilities to transfer files.
Some time ago I was working with PiZero's from RealVNC Viewer in
Windows, and RealVNC had a button or something you could click to get up
a menu for sending or fetching files plus other things. There is no such
button in RealVNC now. Something missing in TigerVNC?

Thank you so much for all the help.
Best regards.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2024 13:11:38 +0100, Jesper Kaas wrote:

> Samba is installed on Pi, and smb.conf edited in a number
> of ways.

You can test access access to the Samba server from a different Linux
machine, or even the same Linux machine, using smbclient. That might help
to diagnose some problems, by taking Windows completely out of the
equation.

By the way, two config options that can affect the ability of Windows
clients, particularly older Windows clients, to connect, are “server min
protocol” and “ntlm auth”.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Mon, 5 Feb 2024 15:29:32 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Make sure smb and nmb daemons are running

nmb is needed to implement NT4 domains. That’s supposed to be obsolescent,
but the next step from that is Active Directory, and you probably don’t
want to go there. So yeah, nmb it is.

Also I hear, once a Windows client has felt the hot breath of Active
Directory on its network stack, it can never go back to NT4 domains.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2024 12:40:43 +0000 (GMT), Bob Latham wrote:

> Comment out using # anything in [homes] even [homes] itself to prevent
> unwanted 'pi' share. eg.

If you are doing a lot of testing with enabling and disabling individual
shares, an easy way to disable a share without having to comment the whole
thing out is to add the setting “available = no”.

[68g.1499]

On 2/5/24 7:11 AM, Jesper Kaas wrote:
> Raspberrypi 5 running updated bookworm.
>
> Moving files between Windows and Pi'es was easy with VNC, but VNC
> server is gone in Bookworm. Moving files between Windows and Pi *can*
> be done with SCP, but everytime I have to check how to write the
> command corretly. Bad memory.

"Worm" is not really an 'upgrade' IMHO. More like some crap
contaminated by the Canonical philosophy. Deb should FIRE
those dinks. They made Worm the moral equiv of Vista.

However, there are several VNC servers you can install,
one is there kinda by default if you just use the rPI
config utility. I prefer tightvncserver. Note that
Tiger will subtly alter some deeply-obscure config
files under /etc which tends to keep OTHER VNC servers
from working right. After long searching I found what
needed to be changed back to default. SOME VNC servers
allow for cut-n-paste, some don't, some claim to but
don't always.

Also, for traditional file sharing, there's SAMBA server.
DO suggest manually adding 'winbind' and 'cifs-utils' to
the install. Plenty of docs on samba.conf and how to set
up shares/users - SOME of which are semi-comprehensible.
Copy examples, tweak to suit later. That's quickest.

The Samba config file is where you make shares 'visible'
or not. It sometimes works without winbind, sometimes
not, so DO co-install winbind.

Anyway, Samba is THE best way to share files to/from
a Pi or any other Linux system. NFS may be traditional
but it's WEIRD, funky to set up, potentially less
secure, NO faster really anymore and generally less
flexible than Samba. Note that the BSDs have an
older-spec Samba which may not easily employ the
more modern security features. Not a big deal on
an intranet, but a possible PROBLEM for sharing
over the internet.

And for cheap file "sharing" there's always 'scp'.
DO change your SSH port to something non-standard
however. My firewalls doc infinite attempts on
the standard port, but nada elsewhere. The perps
are not movie-style hackers, just stupid bots
that don't waste time. There ARE some easy params
to tweak in the sshd config file to limit how
many attempts/sessions an outside agent might
attempt. Fail2Ban is also useful.

Did all this crap, often, for a mid-sized concern.
Nobody ever broke the system - not even a company
hired to find security weaknesses, even after offered
'special access' through the firewalls.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Tue, 6 Feb 2024 00:10:46 -0500, 68g.1499 wrote:

> DO suggest manually adding 'winbind' and 'cifs-utils' to the install.

windbind is if you want your Linux logins to be controlled by a Windows
server. Probably not recommended. cifs-utils is, again, another client-
side thing, letting your Linux system mount volumes from a Windows server.
Maybe useful for testing against your Samba server, otherwise unnecessary
(see smbclient).

[Jesper Kaas]

Aha. Thanks for the tip :-)

[Jesper Kaas]

NMB seems to be running. "sudo service smbd status" gives this output:

* nmbd.service - Samba NMB Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nmbd.service; enabled; preset:
enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2024-02-06 06:22:24 CET; 3h
16min ago
Docs: man:nmbd(8)
man:samba(7)
man:smb.conf(5)
Process: 1603 ExecCondition=/usr/share/samba/is-configured nmb
(code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 1678 (nmbd)
Status: "nmbd: ready to serve connections..."
Tasks: 2 (limit: 9250)
CPU: 256ms
CGroup: /system.slice/nmbd.service
|-1678 /usr/sbin/nmbd --foreground --no-process-group
`-1683 /usr/sbin/nmbd --foreground --no-process-group

feb. 06 06:22:23 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting nmbd.service - Samba
NMB Daemon...
feb. 06 06:22:24 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started nmbd.service - Samba
NMB Daemon.
~
Best regards

[Jesper Kaas]

On 06.02.2024 06:10, 68g.1499 wrote:
> On 2/5/24 7:11 AM, Jesper Kaas wrote:
>> Raspberrypi 5 running updated bookworm.
>>
>> Moving files between Windows and Pi'es was easy with VNC, but VNC
>> server is gone in Bookworm. Moving files between Windows and Pi *can*
>> be done with SCP, but everytime I have to check how to write the
>> command corretly. Bad memory.
>
>   "Worm" is not really an 'upgrade' IMHO. More like some crap
>   contaminated by the Canonical philosophy. Deb should FIRE
>   those dinks. They made Worm the moral equiv of Vista.
>
>   However, there are several VNC servers you can install,
>   one is there kinda by default if you just use the rPI
>   config utility.

Unforunately only the RealVNC Viewer can be activated. Not the server.
Anyway, after following Bob Lathams guide I can see the raspi shares in
windows, so by now there is no reason to hunt for a better VNC server.
Put perhaps restrict the access to all files on the raspberrypi.

> I prefer tightvncserver. Note that
>   Tiger will subtly alter some deeply-obscure config
>   files under /etc which tends to keep OTHER VNC servers
>   from working right. After long searching I found what
>   needed to be changed back to default. SOME VNC servers
>   allow for cut-n-paste, some don't, some claim to but
>   don't always.
>
>   Also, for traditional file sharing, there's SAMBA server.
>   DO suggest manually adding 'winbind' and 'cifs-utils' to
>   the install. Plenty of docs on samba.conf and how to set
>   up shares/users - SOME of which are semi-comprehensible.
>   Copy examples, tweak to suit later. That's quickest.
>
>   The Samba config file is where you make shares 'visible'
>   or not. It sometimes works without winbind, sometimes
>   not, so DO co-install winbind.

Well I started reading about winbind, and it looks way more complicated
to install (and use) than I can manage.

>
>   Anyway, Samba is THE best way to share files to/from
>   a Pi or any other Linux system. NFS may be traditional
>   but it's WEIRD, funky to set up, potentially less
>   secure, NO faster really anymore and generally less
>   flexible than Samba. Note that the BSDs have an
>   older-spec Samba which may not easily employ the
>   more modern security features. Not a big deal on
>   an intranet, but a  possible PROBLEM for sharing
>   over the internet.
>
>   And for cheap file "sharing" there's always 'scp'.
>   DO change your SSH port to something non-standard
>   however. My firewalls doc infinite attempts on
>   the standard port, but nada elsewhere. The perps
>   are not movie-style hackers, just stupid bots
>   that don't waste time. There ARE some easy params
>   to tweak in the sshd config file to limit how
>   many attempts/sessions an outside agent might
>   attempt. Fail2Ban is also useful.
>
>   Did all this crap, often, for a mid-sized concern.
>   Nobody ever broke the system - not even a company
>   hired to find security weaknesses, even after offered
>   'special access' through the firewalls.

Thanks for your thorough comments

Best regards

[Pancho]

On 06/02/2024 01:13, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> Also I hear, once a Windows client has felt the hot breath of Active
> Directory on its network stack, it can never go back to NT4 domains.

I think it is possible to go back.

A few years ago, I got the reasonable idea that I would like a single
user identity for all file shares on my home LAN. So I decided to set up
an ActiveDirectory type admin. I think I used OpenLDAP running on a rPi.

It was only after I “successfully” finished that I realised what it
meant. A huge number of system admin tasks had to be done in an AD
specific way. The smallest task became a mountain, for me at least. So I
rolled it all back, I'm pretty sure I didn't need a full system install
on all MS Windows clients, but can't be certain.

I still like the idea of a network wide user identity, primarily for
file shares, but this early experiment has put me off further attempts
to achieve it.

[68g.1499]

HAVE run into distros where the lack of winbind screws SAMBA.
This is not a global issue however. Try it without winbind
first.

Cifs-utils also adds the handy "-t cifs" option to 'mount'.

Note that I often wanted Winders boxes to mount shares on
the Linux boxes and vice-versa. Office environments are
usually "mixed" and, no, the boss is NOT gonna move the
whole place over to Linux - more likely to all-Winders
instead since bosses rarely understand IT stuff. I've
encountered people who had to HIDE Linux boxes behind
names like "winserver-B" until certain bosses moved
on ... really !

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2024 01:26:45 -0500, 68g.1499 wrote:

> HAVE run into distros where the lack of winbind screws SAMBA.

Maybe you should diagnose the problem first, rather than guessing that
“this package, which doesn’t do anything relevant, might fix the problem”.

Another tip: the default log file names for client connections can be a
bit opaque. I like to set this option

log file = /var/log/samba/log.%I-%R

which puts the client IP address and the protocol version they are using
into the log file name. Then you can narrow down the machines having
trouble connecting, and have a guess as to why (“I didn’t know that box
was still running Windows 7!”).

[68g.1499]

On 2/6/24 4:16 AM, Jesper Kaas wrote:
> On 06.02.2024 06:10, 68g.1499 wrote:
>> On 2/5/24 7:11 AM, Jesper Kaas wrote:
>>> Raspberrypi 5 running updated bookworm.
>>>
>>> Moving files between Windows and Pi'es was easy with VNC, but VNC
>>> server is gone in Bookworm. Moving files between Windows and Pi *can*
>>> be done with SCP, but everytime I have to check how to write the
>>> command corretly. Bad memory.
>>
>>    "Worm" is not really an 'upgrade' IMHO. More like some crap
>>    contaminated by the Canonical philosophy. Deb should FIRE
>>    those dinks. They made Worm the moral equiv of Vista.
>>
>>    However, there are several VNC servers you can install,
>>    one is there kinda by default if you just use the rPI
>>    config utility.
>
> Unforunately only the RealVNC Viewer can be activated. Not the server.

Um ... have TightVNCServer running on four PIs at my
home right now - three Bullseye and one Worm.

Never activate the default VNC server ... go to Synaptic
or something and install Tight. It will ask if you want
to uninstall the other, say yes.

Anyway, it works.

DID warn about Tiger sneakily changing some config files
in ways that DOES block some other VNC servers ...

> Anyway, after following Bob Lathams guide I can see the raspi shares in
> windows, so by now there is no reason to hunt for a better VNC server.
> Put perhaps restrict the access to all files on the raspberrypi.

VNC is not really made to "share" files/folders ... it's
a remote-desktop thing. As said, use SAMBA if you want to
share files/folders cleanly.

>>    I prefer tightvncserver. Note that
>>    Tiger will subtly alter some deeply-obscure config
>>    files under /etc which tends to keep OTHER VNC servers
>>    from working right. After long searching I found what
>>    needed to be changed back to default. SOME VNC servers
>>    allow for cut-n-paste, some don't, some claim to but
>>    don't always.
>>
>>    Also, for traditional file sharing, there's SAMBA server.
>>    DO suggest manually adding 'winbind' and 'cifs-utils' to
>>    the install. Plenty of docs on samba.conf and how to set
>>    up shares/users - SOME of which are semi-comprehensible.
>>    Copy examples, tweak to suit later. That's quickest.
>>
>>    The Samba config file is where you make shares 'visible'
>>    or not. It sometimes works without winbind, sometimes
>>    not, so DO co-install winbind.
>
> Well I started reading about winbind, and it looks way more complicated > to install (and use) than I can manage.

On SOME distros, SAMBA just would not work right unless
winbind was there - although NO extra configuration was
ever needed. Try it without winbind first.

[Jesper Kaas]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2024 01:36:30 -0500, "68g.1499" <68g....@etr6.net>
wrote:

> Um ... have TightVNCServer running on four PIs at my
> home right now - three Bullseye and one Worm.
>
> Never activate the default VNC server ... go to Synaptic
> or something and install Tight. It will ask if you want
> to uninstall the other, say yes.

I should like to try Tightvnc on the raspberrypi, but both TigerVNC
and RealVNC leaves some stuff behind when uninstalled, and this stuff
seems to prevent TightVNC from working. Tried this and that, but
connection attempts from Windows PC to raspberrypi times out every
time.
By now i will not do more with this, but take my 2 cats out for a walk
in the garden :-)
The problem with moving files between raspberrypi and windows PC's is
fixed, so I am happy :-)

Best regards