Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit hates Ubuntu

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I'm running a back-up from Windows XP which is booting from the same laptop as my Ubuntu 8.04 install to a drive attached to the Windows 7 machine. No username/password prompt. It just works.

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

Is this a Microsoft decision to break Samba sharing?

With the proviso that I don't use Windows any more :-) I wonder if you have seen these posts, and would mind trying out the steps mentioned there:
http://www.twistedethics.com/2009/10/20/making-windows-7-and-vista-play-nice-with-samba/
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/75-63-windows-samba-issue (kind of the reverse, where there were problems connecting from Win 7 to Samba, though your initial description says that is working for you...?)

Could you please post back and mention if either or both of the above helped?

Thanks,
Ed.

Thanks for the links, Ed S. I'm glad to try anything I can.

Of the first link: My Windows 7 machine is running the version most people get with a new machine, namely Windows 7 Home Premium. This particular machine is running the 64bit version, if it matters. The first link directs one to run the GPMC. This doesn't come with Home Premium. A download I found on Microsoft's site has a (minimum?) prerequisite of the Enterprise edition of Windows 7.

The second link seems to have worked for some of the responders to that thread, but the

Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Local Security Policy

was somewhere lost or removed from the final release of Windows 7 Home Premium (The thread talks about various release candidates, etc. )

I tried some minor sleuthing of the registry, but after awhile, I stopped. The Win 7 machine is a source of income around here, so I can't afford to bang around too much.

It also occurs to me that I'm a special case, in that I'm allowed to experiment with the Windows 7 machine. What about all the others who don't have the privilege to ask the Windows 7 owner to screw with his registry so Ubuntu can hook up.

Again, I can "see" the Windows 7 machine. It requests a User name, Domain and password. I enter it and it asks again. There is no message, such as "no, wrong, try again", just a pause and it repeats. The Windows 7 machine can see my Ubuntu shares just fine.

There's got to be a way to make Windows 7 "think" it's talking to an XP machine. I have actually had a Virtual XP running inside Ubuntu and connect to the Windows 7 machine. Not really the solution I'm looking for.

Oh, dear... feature crippling to encourage users to purchase more expensive editions? :-(

I did some more looking around, and it appears that the Win 7 Home Premium edition does not accept "browse" connections from Samba clients, while Ultimate Edition does accept them: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8435160&postcount=4
That post links to an MS feedback form, where you could add a complaint against this behavior.

Although there seems to be some murmuring about upgrading to newer versions of Samba might sort this out, that is a lot of effort to do, if a new version isn't available in the software repositories.
However, http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8435503&postcount=5 contains a possible workaround - it says that using smbmount lets you access the contents of the shared folders. That info is repeated at
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/236684-50-windows-linux-file-share-problem
Search this page for "mount -t cifs //ipaddress/sharefolder ~/Share/ -o " in the page, you could try mitch074's code line, with the 'rw' added at the end, on your Ubuntu box. If you need some addiitonal documentation on smbmount via CIFS, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpSamba#Connecting using CIFS

If the command-line version works, then you could try a GUI front-end for CIFS/SMB browsing, like pyNeighborhood or xSMBrowser (having to issue that command every time you want to access the Win 7 share = ugh! :-) ). If these GUIs don't work well enough, perhaps you could just add a couple of custom application launcher icons to your GNOME panel - one to mount the share and open a Nautilus window on it (nautilus --browse /home/user/foldername, IIRC)... and the other one to unmount the share. Hopefully the Win 7 machine doesn't have too many shares :-P otherwise this too can get rather tedious.

Hoping this will at least be a more helpful answer than my last :-)

" If you need some addiitonal documentation on smbmount via CIFS, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpSamba#Connecting using CIFS"

Ugh! I thought that URL would break! It only takes you to the top of the page, so please click "Connecting using CIFS" - 3.1 in the Contents box on the right - to visit the actual topic.

First off, thanks for the dogged determination, Ed S. One of the solutions worked for me.

I modified and experimented with the first suggested command and ended up with:

sudo mount -t cifs //candacek-pc/J /media/OneTouch -o iocharset=utf8,file mode=0777,dir mode=0777,rw

where //candacek-pc/J is the Windows 7 Home Premium machine and /J is a USB external hard drive shared by the Windows PC

/media/OneTouch is a directory I created on the Ubuntu machine with

mkdir /media/OneTouch

Notice that "username=" and "password=" suggested in one of the threads mentioned led to problems, so I omitted them with no harm. I'm no expert, so I don't have anything new to share about what all the other stuff on the line is.

I entered a known password, and it worked. I rebooted, had to enter all this stuff again, and just hit enter at the password prompt. That also worked.

Getting brave now, I modified my /etc/fstab file to include a last line:

//candacek-pc/J /media/OneTouch cifs defaults,rw 0 0

I rebooted, expecting disaster, but there was the OneTouch USB external hard drive, plugged into the Windows 7 Home Premium machine, mounted and shared to the Ubuntu machine.

If I go to Places->Network, I see candacek-pc in the Windows network, but am prompted with the Username and password dialog box and can't satify the request.

I go to File Manager (is this nautilus?), there's the drive in /media/OneTouch folder. Good enough for me.

Thank you, Ed S

Hey, you're welcome - it's fun to find workarounds for crippled features in proprietary OSs, when it comes to cooperating with FOSS OSs...

I too am a little puzzled about why giving a username and password didn't work, but it worked without those. In the past (connecting to XP, at most - never tried with Vista and of course W7) I had to give the username and password or it wouldn't let me connect. Good of you to try sans those - I would likely have groaned and given up when username+password failed (it's habit to expect that those are required). Good for me to learn this quirk, too - at least, that I may have to try this if needed in future.

Yay! :-) Connected and working, and although not via the method a new user would expect, you know how to use it, so great :-)

Yes, Nautilus is the file manager in GNOME (other desktop managers like KDE, LXDE, XFCE etc each have their own file managers), and Nautilus does more, including drawing your desktop icons etc. It's also Nautilus that's invoked by Places > Network, but in this case you've done an end run sort of "behind its back" :-) by mounting the shared OneTouch yourself.

I do see you're mounting it rw, but just checking - you HAVE tried writing/copying some folders and files into the mounted /media/OneTouch? Again, there are threads in the forums concerning getting RW access, and I wouldn't have much of my own first-hand experience to offer, but just asking.

If it _does_ work RW, then **please consider marking your question as Solved** - that also helps indicate to other people that there is a possible solution/workaround in this Q&A thread. Thanks.

Well, Ed S

Thanks (I think) for the heads-up on the RW issue. I just tried right-click copy of a random spreadsheet from my Desktop and right-click paste to the /media/OneTouch. I went, but with a little lock icon. I opened the file on the OneTouch and tried to modify a cell. I got a Read Only message. I did Save-As to a new name, and that worked, except it also was Read Only. I can't change permissions from the right-click-Properties tab, either.

I guess that explains all the error messages I've been watching flash by as I'm running Grsync to do a backup over to the OneTouch, which was the point of the exercise ;-{

Somewhat related, my computer was taking forever to reboot after monkeying around. I saw

CIFS VFS: Server not responding.

I found some instructions to run these two commands, which seems to have helped:

ln -s /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh /etc/rc0.d/K15umountnfs.sh
ln -s /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh /etc/rc6.d/K15umountnfs.sh

I also found this, which I'm going to try next in fstab:
//candacek-pc/J /media/OneTouch cifs guest,rw,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

I'll report back.

Re: my last post, the latest edit of the fstab didn't help. Still can copy, but destination file turns read-only. Grsync runs, but "Permission denied" is the only result of writes to the destination drive.

Happily, I haven't hosed anything yet.

> Thanks (I think) for the heads-up on the RW issue.  I just tried right-

Yeah - I've faced enough problems with Samba myself :-( so now tend to
test writing to a share manually - copy a file, open it from the share
and verify the contents are all there, and then delete it. If that
works, the share passes :)

> click copy of a random spreadsheet from my Desktop and right-click paste
> to the /media/OneTouch.  I went, but with a little lock icon.  I opened
> the file on the OneTouch and tried to modify a cell.  I got a Read Only
> message.  I did Save-As to a new name, and that worked, except it also
> was Read Only.  I can't change permissions from the right-click-
> Properties tab, either.

Weird - looks like you can create, but not modify files...

> I guess that explains all the error messages I've been watching flash by
> as I'm running Grsync to do a backup over to the OneTouch, which was the
> point of the exercise ;-{

Oops! Heh heh - that's why sysads keep telling each other to verify
those backups! :-) We tend not to, until we need files from the backup
:-(( On the bright side, at least now you're aware that there {are|may
be} some issues with the backup process.

In http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/236684-50-windows-linux-file-share-problem "kyeana" writes: "using apt-get upgrade a bunch of new smb stuff was installed today, and i now have proper access to all of the shared files" - maybe worth a try?

Ed S,

Thanks for that input. This morning Ubuntu 8.04 (maybe other higher-ups) got an Update Notification. Yep, lots of Samba stuff in there. I dared hope that it was the answer. Everything I've described today was post-upgrade, so I'll have to say "Nope" to the "Hope".

You said: "
Yeah - I've faced enough problems with Samba myself :-( so now tend to
test writing to a share manually - copy a file, open it from the share
and verify the contents are all there, and then delete it. If that
works, the share passes :)"

(sorry, I don't have that quote thing down).

I can do all the above, but I don't see you saying you can Modify the file. I can't. My file gets copied as Read-only.

I'm done for today. I usually try "one-last-thing" and end up with a doorstop :-}

Chip:

If possible, could you try a Live CD of Karmic (9.10) or even better, the Lucid (10.04) beta on your system, and see if accessing the Win 7 share has the same problems?

The quoting was done when I replied via email - I just snipped out the parts I wasn't responding to. Apparently responding via email flags it as an 'answer' instead of 'comment' or 'information request' so I'm back to using the Web interface :)

Generally, I'd consider deleting a file sufficient to say I could write to it - though, of course, depending on the type of filesystem, that's not always true. You have a point, though - for checking backed-up files, I should also check if I can overwrite the contents of the file...

I've been doing some more poking around, because this is tantalizing - almost there, yet not quite - and I think you should take a look at the share permissions on the Win 7 machine. In addition - is the volume on the OneTouch FAT32 or NTFS? If the latter, do look at the NTFS permissions as well - there might be some weird restrictions there. BTW, connecting without a username or password means you're connecting as the Guest user, I guess, so in particular check the permissions for that user.

Ed S.

I've got another dual-boot laptop with XP and Ubuntu 9.10. I ran Update Manager and installed the latest batch of "samba stuff" that was offered. I diddled the smb.conf to change the workgroup to MSHOME (which everything else is on). No luck with Ubuntu. XP (Professional) sees everything just fine. (No one has mentioned what specific XP or Vista they run as client.) Same hardware, network, router.

This is important. I can foresee a future when dozens of people are (still) using Linux.

Chip:

OK, so 9.10 can't handle it yet... I wonder if trying 10.04 beta is a good idea - it's still over a month to the official release date, and things do change from beta to final release.

Re the XP/Vista versions: it gets increasingly more difficult to keep track of the various "wonderful" editions that MS puts out for each of its OS releases. IIRC XP Pro would do "in-office" SMB networking with domain logons etc, but not XP Home. I think simple peer-to-peer sharing did work though. You don't really have a Windows domain on your network, right? (fine time to ask, eh? :-P )

"I can foresee a future when dozens of people are (still) using Linux."

That's strange - I see a future where dozens of people are (still) using Windows.

:-))

When you get the chance to, like I said in a previous post:
I think you should take a look at the share permissions on the Win 7 machine. In addition - is the volume on the OneTouch FAT32 or NTFS? If the latter, do look at the NTFS permissions as well - there might be some weird restrictions there. BTW, connecting without a username or password means you're connecting as the Guest user, I guess, so in particular check the permissions for that user or "Everyone"

Ed S

Sorry about the Linux wisecrack. I was paraphrasing a New York mayor long ago who tried out a telephone and said he could foresee the day when every town would have one.

The OneTouch is NTFS. I drilled down to the Permissions section and found "Everyone" (group?) had Full, Change and Read access Allowed. There was a tab to Add Users, so I typed in "Guest" and hit the "check names" button. It came up with //candacek-pc/Guest so I clicked ok (or whatever). (The slashes might have been going the other way - I don't recall). I was able to add Full, Change and Read permissions to Guest.

Now the test. Back over to the Ubuntu box, I click the OneTouch share. After a bit of a pause, up come the contents of the drive. I can browse the folders and copy to the drive, but, alas, the copies still arrive read-only.

Long day, so .....

Oops, last thing. I don't thing I'm on a domain. I'm not smart enough to set one of those up ;-} It's a peer-to-peer, AFAIK, Workgroup MSHOME.

Chip:

This is frustrating :-( So close and yet so far...

Some more idea, looking at http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/karmic/man8/mount.cifs.8.html
Start debugging by unmounting the folder given in /etc/fstab, and remounting it at the command line with
mount -t cifs //server/share /mnt --verbose -o user=username ... ... (other options). The debug info may give a clue as to what is actually going on to yield the weird results we're seeing. Especially monitor this output when creating test files in /media/OneTouch, and attempting to modify them.

- add these flags to the mount options, remount, create new files, check if they are read-only:
nosetuids,noperm,noacl,nouser_xattr,domain=<workgroupname of Win 7 computer>

- Instead of mounting the shared folder as guest, use a username and password that exists on the Win 7 PC and has Full access to the OneTouch drive and its NTFS filesystem. Not quite sure what form Win 7 expects the username in, so do try various forms like: username; workgroupname/username; computername/username.

Ed S,

Sorry,

I have an Administrator account on the Win7 machine. I tried some of the above with that user name and password. I got Permission denied. We're drifting into territory that the average Ubuntu user would not be able to request from the average Win 7 owner. "Can you set me up an administrator account on your machine so I can connect my Linux box?" seems beyond the call of duty. Especially when an XP machine gets on with no issues.

I have to hang up the gloves.

Maybe you could find someone with Windows 7 Home Premium (there are several million) and try to hook up an Ubuntu laptop.

I'm out of steam.

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:16 AM, ImChipBrown
<email address hidden> wrote:
> seems beyond the call of duty.    Especially when an XP machine gets on
> with no issues.
>
> I have to hang up the gloves.
>
> Maybe you could find someone with Windows 7 Home Premium (there are
> several million) and try to hook up an Ubuntu laptop.
>
> I'm out of steam.

I understand - this is too long-drawn-out. I think it should be
retried with Lucid (10.04) which should come with a newer version of
Samba, but perhaps someone else will try that and report. Sorry we
couldn't arrive at a conclusive answer, but I hope we learnt a bit
more :)

Cheers
Ed.

Ed S,

Just so you know, I did download the 10.04 Beta and spun it up. I really like the looks of it. I tried a few of the suggestions with no discernible difference. I didn't "install" it, but I may when the second or third official release comes out. I'm still on 8.04 because 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10 has various issues (broken screen-capture, GoogleEarth weirdness) that didn't overcome the positives . It centered on the Intel 915GM support, which took many séances and animal sacrifices to get to work properly.

My parting thought is that we can't be the only ones without a solution to this.

When I posted the above message, the only option button at the bottom was "This solved my problem". On course, I didn't. No I have "I Still Need an Answer" and "Just Add a Comment". "Need" is a little strong (I can boot into XP) but I'm choosing that button.

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 9:41 PM, ImChipBrown
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Ed S,
>
> Just so you know, I did download the 10.04 Beta and spun it up.  I
> really like the looks of it.  I tried a few of the suggestions with no
> discernible difference.  I didn't "install" it, but I may when the
> second or third official release comes out.  I'm still on 8.04 because

Oh - and it doesn't have any discernible difference in interacting
with Win 7 Home Premium SMB/CIFS... :-( Well, I guess that goes to
show that when MS set out to CRIPPLE something... THAT they do well.
Making a secure OS and software - maybe not so much. Ah, well...

> 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10 has various issues (broken screen-capture,
> GoogleEarth weirdness) that didn't overcome the positives .  It centered
> on the Intel 915GM support, which took many séances and animal
> sacrifices to get to work properly.

ROFLOL! I sympathize with you that sometimes moving to newer distro
releases is a major pain in the (ahem). In fact, I've been
entertaining somewhat heretic thoughts of ArchLinux with its
always-rolling-updates methodology, but haven't quite accumulated the
escape velocity to break free of Ubuntu just yet :-)
And no, I haven't any idea of whether support for i915 is any better
there - same kernel, more or less, I don't see why it should differ
much - but they are said to have way better support and documentation,
according to a friend who recently shifted distros.

> My parting thought is that we can't be the only ones without a solution
> to this.

Sighh... yes, but that isn't really consolation, y'know... Still,
maybe a few months will change the situation - that often happens...
FOSS developers catch up to the latest megalomaniac maneuverings of
proprietary megacorps (and tridge & co have been rather persistent
about that for a *long* time). I agree that we should write
"unsolvable at present" to this saga, and move on. Thanks for your
patience and willingness to experiment, and I hold out the hope that
at some point in the not too distant future, your problem will be
solved.

Cheers,
Ed.