Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

[Kalecomm]

I've been using Kubuntu Linux, in it's various forms for years and I love it. However, both Intrepid and Jaunty seem to suffer from the same problem: Rewriting a file modified in Kate fails with, "The document could not be saved, as it was not possible to write to /media/joc/members2.html".

I do all serious work in Kubuntu as Windows is really only useful for games or finances in my personal opinion. All of my web design/database work is done in Kubuntu. As such, I keep all of my web development files on a file server running Debian 4.0 and Samba 3.

I've checked all my permissions and everything looks good and my laptop upstairs has Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) and it works perfectly with Kate and my file server. What is it about Intrepid and Jaunty that causes this behavior? I've seen on the 'net others reporting similar issues with newer versions of Linux distros that run KDE 4.0+. I have to say, I'm rather stumped as to why this is occurring. Is anyone else having similar problems with either Intrepid or Jaunty running KDE 4.0+? For me, this is a deal-breaker and I'll be forced to go back to Hardy and forgo the benefits of Jaunty because I have to be able to modify and resave files on my file server.

Thanks for any help in advance!

Best Regards,

Kalecomm

[gerryggg]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

I'm by no means experienced with Linux. I've been using it in various formats for a few years. I, too, have noticed problems with samba beginning with 8.1 and continuing with 9.04. I have tried many different ways to get it to work but it seems a one-way street. I can get Windows boxes to show up in Samba, but none of the linux boxes show up either to each other or to the Windows PCs. At one time I had everything working fine with three linux boxes and one XP box all showing up and accessible to each other. At that time two of the linux boxes were running Kubuntu and one Debian 4.0. Alas those days appear gone. I spent hours today playing with my smb.conf files and share settings to no avail.

[barbolani]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

I've noticed some beta Samba4 packages, have you installed them instead of the standard ones? Silly question, but just in case.

Whereas I had similar problems with Samba in 8.10, I let the upgrade overwrote the smb.conf and started from scratch this time. Not only the graphical configuration tools work now (were not in 8.10) but I did not find any problems.

I have 3 Ubuntu boxes, 2 of them dual boot with Windows and a printer hooked to one of them. I can access shares from a Windows machine in a Linux box and viceversa and print without problems.

Your problem looks like some kind of general network configuration issue in the 9.04 machine. Is this the only machine you've upgraded to 9.04? Are you able to ping the server over your LAN? Are you able to browse the internet? Can you ping from one of the other machines to the 9.04 one?

[Kalecomm]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

I'll try updating the file server (Debian 4.0/Samba 3, installed by apt-get install samba on that system).

As for the 9.04 machine, it's a Compaq SR5130NX, dual-core AMD system w/ 2.5 GB of memory and a 200GB HDD. It's dual booted w/Windows XP Pro/Kubuntu 9.04, no swap partition. Because of where it's located, it has a wireless card in it and connects both windows and Linux via the wireless. It can ping any address on my local network and I'm able to use Firefox for web browsing. I can also read/write to the file server, but not rewrite any file.

I'll post more here once I do apt-get update; apt-get upgrade on my file server and let y'all know the results.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Best Regards,

Kalecomm

[Kalecomm]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

Booted into the Kubuntu 9.04 side, and I get the same...Error message is:

The document could not be saved, as it was not possible to write to /media/joc/member2.html. Check that you have write access to this file or that enough disk space is available.

/etc/fstab mounts that file share as:

//192.168.0.194/joc /media/joc smbfs defaults,credentials=/home/keith/credentials,uid=keith 0 0

ls -l of /media looks like this:

root@tanya-desktop:~# ls -l /media
total 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2009-05-02 18:07 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-05-02 18:07 cdrom0
drwxrwx--- 6 keith keith 0 2009-05-12 21:47 joc
drwxrwx--- 19 keith keith 0 2009-05-06 01:49 keith
drwxrwx--- 72 root users 0 2009-04-24 09:41 MP3
drwxrwx--- 20 root users 0 2009-05-12 14:28 public
drwxrwx--- 9 root users 0 2008-10-22 18:21 resume
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-05-03 20:36 windows

The thing is, the file server functions perfectly in Windows and in Kubuntu 8.04. Am I overlooking something? Can you see where I'm going wrong?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best Regards,

Kalecomm

[barbolani]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

Mmmmm... if the shares are writable under other operating systems, then everything points to the way the shared resource is mounted. The line

//192.168.0.194/joc /media/joc smbfs defaults,credentials=/home/keith/credentials,uid=keith 0 0

Specifies that the uid of the user mounting the folder should be "keith", but the server checks the rights to write on remote files based on the identity of the user that is mounting the share (contained in the /home/keith/credentials file). To determine if the server is raising the error I'd make a simple test, trying to overwrite a file from the workstation as root on the mounted folder. If you keep getting the error, then is the server who is blocking you. If not, then there is a problem in how the resource is mounted.

Could you try accessing the shared folder from dolphin using smb://192.168.0.194/joc and with smb4k allowing it to mount the share on /home/keith/192.168.0.194/joc? In both cases, check if you're able to write/overwrite files. That would help point to the source of the problem.

[gerryggg]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

I've noticed some beta Samba4 packages, have you installed them instead of the standard ones? Silly question, but just in case.

Whereas I had similar problems with Samba in 8.10, I let the upgrade overwrote the smb.conf and started from scratch this time. Not only the graphical configuration tools work now (were not in 8.10) but I did not find any problems.

I have 3 Ubuntu boxes, 2 of them dual boot with Windows and a printer hooked to one of them. I can access shares from a Windows machine in a Linux box and viceversa and print without problems.

Your problem looks like some kind of general network configuration issue in the 9.04 machine. Is this the only machine you've upgraded to 9.04? Are you able to ping the server over your LAN? Are you able to browse the internet? Can you ping from one of the other machines to the 9.04 one?

I haven't installed any of the beta software. I have four machines on the network. One XP only box used by my wife, this machine which dual boots XP and Kubuntu, a laptop with XP, and another machine which dual boots Kubuntu and Puppy Linux 4.20. All machines see the XP machines. In other words, if I boot this box into XP, it appears on the network so I know the card is working. All can access the internet. This box and the other XP machine are hardwired. The laptop and the other Kubuntu machine are wireless. All access the internet with no problems. I recently upgraded my router from a Netgear wireless G to a Linksys Rangeplus wireless N. I picked up noticeable speed on the wireless machines, but nothing else changed. The other Kubuntu machine is a recent clean install, although it was from 8.04 and then upgraded to 9.04. If I boot into Puppy, it sees the XP machine, but not the Kubuntu machine. When I attempt to access the network through Dolphin, I get a "timeout" error message. The only way I can see the XP machines is with the Komba2 samba browser, but it works flawlessly. Any suggestions?

[Kalecomm]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

Well, I connected through Dolphin as you instructed and I was able to rewrite a file, so you're right, it has to be how the share is mounted. Now, the question is, how does Dolphin mount an smb share and what was wrong with the way I mounted it in /etc/fstab? It works perfectly in Kubuntu 8.04 and Windows XP Pro, so why not 9.04?

I've never used smb4k and I really don't like Dolphin...I prefer Konqueror. So, is there a way for me to mount this so that it will allow me to use Konqueror instead of Dolphin?

BTW, thanks so much for pointing out these tools, as I'm used to just using smb through fstab.

Best Regards,

Kalecomm

[barbolani]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

The problem must be then in the different defaults that 8.04 and 9.04 assume when you omit mount options. You can try by using the mount command (as sudo) in the command line adding different options (my first bet would be rw) until you get the share mounted the way you want.

By the way, the last time I checked you could use the smb:// url in konqueror address bar.

After it is working by mount from the command line you can update fstab with the right options. Sorry for not being more specific, I tend to prefer GUI tools like smb4k for those chores.

[Kalecomm]

Re: Rewriting file to samba share fails In Jaunty

I did some digging and found this bug that was submitted for Intrepid: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ba/+bug/286828

Apparently, this is a known bug and it results when the DFS option is stated to be supported (I'm not real sure what a "DFS option" is!) by the samba server, but is not and the client attempts to use that feature. The recommendation from the team was to upgrade the samba server to a non-affected version. Alternatively, you can mount your cifs shares with a "nodfs" option. I have tried this and it does indeed work! mount -t cifs -o username=keith,password=<censored!>,rw,nodfs //192.168.0.194/joc /media/joc

So, it looks like I may have to manually upgrade my samba server so that the dfs options that are now a part of the cifs client work properly.

Incidentally, the reason that mounting it through dolphin or konqueror (yes, that does indeed work as well!) is that it connects through an smbclient type kio socket and therefore isn't actually "mounted"

I noticed also in my search that this bug doesn't just affect *buntu machines, but is reported with other distributions as well (fedora, suse, puppy, etc.) because this is a cifs/samba issue.

I really appreciate all of your help and you taught me a few things too...I didn't know about smb4k before I posted here and I wasn't aware of being able to use smb:// in either dolphin or konqueror. Thanks so much for your help! It's truly appreciated!!

Best Regards,

Kalecomm