First time installed Samba and its not work

johnytheboar · 27 June 2026 14:01

Hey

I cannot connect to my samba share from my windows machine .
Its my first time setting Samba on the firewall, i think iv set everything correctly:

[sambashare]
path = /srv/sambashare
comment = Secure Sambashare
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
guest ok = no
public = no
valid users = @sambauser
force group = sambauser
create mask = 0660
directory mask = 0770

samba services run in the gui and everything is green ,

The sambashare dir exists , iv created a dedicated user and pass for samba , iv set the dir permissions correctly for the group and user, iv created fw rules to allow samba from my local green0 network. the fw indeed listen for 445 , and simple telnet test from my windows pc approved it , and still cannot connect it via file explorer or network map

xperimental · 27 June 2026 14:31

Hi, please check the access rights of the directory “sambashare”.

dr_techno · 27 June 2026 16:04

so can you go to \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx\sambashare manually in file explorer? If so, then your samba is set up correctly.

The samba share not showing up in windows explorer is normal now since Net-BIOS is depreciated and windows uses a different discovery system. On any Linux Samba machine you have to install wsdd and initiate the service which is the new windows-samba share discovery method.

If you can reach it by manually typing the path then discovery is the issue. To test that in windows, execute net view \\IP in the windows command prompt and if it shows an error or no shares listed then you need to install the wsdd discovery since a windows update should have turned off netbios discovery (to mitigate wannacry malware exploit in windows).

So, since you are trying to use samba on the ipfire machine, you need to load wsdd-0.9.4 from pakfire so samba discovery works.

bonnietwin · 27 June 2026 17:37

wsdd is automatically loaded when you install samba.

dr_techno · 27 June 2026 18:19

this looks correct as far as the packages:

 avahi
              dbus
              libdaemon
              libtalloc
              perl-Parse-Yapp
              samba
              wsdd

Nice looking web gui:

However, the Workgroup should be changed to windows default " WORKGROUP " or the computer needs to join the default workgroup (domain name) and add the user with password since the samba users method is used.

Interesting that it shows its share 3 times in Linux nemo file manager

I imagine that is an after effect from loading samba client in Ubuntu Linux

johnytheboar · 27 June 2026 21:43

No. I cannot reach samba via file explorer nor anywhere else.

iv installed and configured samba server on many linux systems, but here i just cant reach the share.

iv set everything . can you think for something iv missed maybe ?

johnytheboar · 27 June 2026 21:45

sambashare directory have a full access perm for samba users and samba group.

im missing something and i cannot see what.

can you point for any step perhaps i have missed ?

dr_techno · 28 June 2026 05:25

I had to make the directory in the samba share (/mnt/share1) by ssh into the ipfire machine then chmod 777 share1. I also removed force user = samba

I also created a user named user. For some reason the user samba can not be used.

then in nemo I double clicked on the location tab and entered smb://green_ip_address/Share1 and entered user and password in the dialogue

dr_techno · 28 June 2026 05:32

I would redo the entry like:

[sambashare]
path = /srv/sambashare
comment = Secure Sambashare
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
guest ok = no
public = no
create mask = 0644
directory mask = 0755

Then log into the ipfire machine and create the directory /srv/sambashare and chmod 777 /srv/sambashare

even though I prefer to run samba shares anywhere else but the ipfire machine.

xperimental · 1 July 2026 22:28

That is the basic how to get it working, for example if you setup a smb server in a container.:

1. Create a share/storage for samba (XXX):
mkdir XXX

2. Find/check Samba Group name (YYY):
less /etc/group

3. Make sure the share/folder (XXX) which will be defined in smb.conf is owned by the Samba Group (YYY):
chgrp YYY XXX

4. Set the user rights to the share/folder (XXX):
chmod 770 XXX

5. Create backup of original smb.conf:
mv /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.bak

6. Create/edit smb.config in /etc/samba/smb.conf:
nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

7. Add new Samba user (ZZZ):
useradd ZZZ

8. Define Samba password for new Samba user (ZZZ):
smbpasswd -a ZZZ

9. Assign new Samba user (ZZZ) to Samba Group (YYY):
usermod -G YYY ZZZ

10. Restart Sanba Deamon and check status:
systemctl restart smbd
systemctl status smbd

For you, I think, step 3 and 4 are the issues.

All other steps should be done via the WUI.

johnytheboar · 4 July 2026 12:18

already did all of these configuration , and still cannot access it from windows pc but thanks you so much for your help

dr_techno · 4 July 2026 18:19

interesting. Is the windows PC on the green network?

johnytheboar · 5 July 2026 08:12

yes ofcourse

pscar13 · 5 July 2026 20:28

this configuration should works

[sambashare]
path = /srv/sambashare
comment = Secure Sambashare
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
guest ok = no
public = no
force user = sambauser
create mask = 0660
directory mask = 0770

bonnietwin · 6 July 2026 14:26

I just set up a vm system and installed a fresh CU202 into it.

I then installed samba.

Your screen should then look like

The default workgroup name that will be used is the Domain Name that you used when you created your IPFire system. You can of course change this and if you are using a Windows system then I believe their default workgroup is WORKGROUP.

The samba use will not be activated. First select the pencil icon against the samba user and you will then get the following screen.

Then replace the Password entry with a password entry of your choice. I tested it out on my system with testing.
Then press the Save button.
Then click on the activate checkbox and it should then become checked.

The default share definition was

I left this completely as it was, without editing anything.

I then went into the IPFire system and created the share /mnt/share1/
by the command mkdir /mnt/share1/ and the result was

I did not change the ownership or the permissions. I just used it as it was created by default.

Then I created a file in that directory.

Screenshot_2026-07-06_16-08-34

Then on my Linux client system (I can’t test out Windows as I don’t have any) I created a mount point /mnt/samba_share1/

Then I installed smbclient into my Linux client and then ran the following command to see what shares were available.

smbclient -L URL-or-IP-of-the-IPFire-system -U%

I got the response


	Sharename       Type      Comment
	---------       ----      -------
	Share1          Disk      Shared Folder
	IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (Samba on IPFire)
SMB1 disabled -- no workgroup available

So the Share1 share is visible to my Linux client.

I then mounted that share (Share1) onto the mount point on the Linux client (/mnt/samba_share1/) by running the command

mount -t cifs //URL-or-IP-of-the-IPFire-system/Share1 /mnt/samba_share1/ -o username=samba,password=testing,workgroup=WORKGROUP,iocharset=utf8,uid=user-name-on-client,gid=group-name-on-client

Then I did a directory listing of the /mnt/samba_share1/ directory on the client and got

ls -hal /mnt/samba_share1
total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x 2 test  test     0 Jul  6 15:47 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4.0K Oct 14  2024 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 test  test   125 Jul  6 15:47 testing-file

and I was able to open that file and confirm the contents on the Linux client.

Once the samba share was mounted on the client then the following was the status shown on the IPFire Samba WUI page

This suggests to me that if you have done the samba setup the same as above on your IPFire system then the likely issue with your connection is the samba mount setup on the Windows client.