Shares all disappeared (CIFS)

[jondecker76]

Yesterday my shares all disappeared. I have rebooted a few time since, and no computers on my network can see any windows shares. NFS shares are still there and available however. Looking at syslog, I have a ton of CIFS errors:

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CIFS VFS: Error connecting to IPv4 socket. Aborting operation
Aug 17 15:59:49 dcerouter kernel: [  158.196000]  CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -111
Aug 17 15:59:49 dcerouter automount[23568]: >> mount error 111 = Connection refused

any tips?

[colinjones]

Try changing the filesystem type in the device data to smbfs instead of cifs, click the online box and try again...

[jondecker76]

I went to my RAID device, and when attempting to change the device data, it was not flaggged as Allowed to Modify. CHanged the master device template to allow modification of the device data, and changed to smbfs. After a reload, it resets itsself to cifs.

[colinjones]

hmm... forgot you were using RAID, I thought we were talking about Windows/NAS shares? RAID on those really should be transparent I would have thought, on LMCE machines they aren't really cifs shares, so I'm not sure what is actually going on

[jondecker76]

the thing is, it always worked like it should until recently. (I'm not extremely knowlegable with network shares)

For example, my wife can't upload her pictures to the pictures share anymore because going to network places in windows, or even the network browser in Ubuntu, there is no longer anything there. Where there used to be a LMCE network populated with shares, there is simply nothing. Though under the mshome workgroup, I can see all of the orbiters...

[colinjones]

not really sure which is cause and which is effect - btw did you put your Windows PCs in the LinuxMCE workgroup? Could be a permissions issue but also these hierarchies are made visible through the black-art of Computer Browser, and the workgroup should certainly make that easier... not being much help here (but very tired!)

[jondecker76]

I'll have to investigate more when I get home, but the LinuxMCE workgroup is what vanished! It completely disappeared from all of my windows machines and all my linux machines. Its simply not there now. So maybe this isn't strictly a cifs issue...

[Zaerc]

That is odd, are the samba deamons even running at all?

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ps ax | grep mbd Should tell you if so.

[jondecker76]

here is my output:

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linuxmce@dcerouter:~$ ps ax | grep mbd
11578 pts/27   R+     0:00 grep mbd
29519 ?        Ss     0:00 /usr/sbin/nmbd -D
29522 ?        Ss     0:21 /usr/sbin/smbd -D
29551 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/smbd -D
29620 ?        S      6:41 /usr/sbin/smbd -D
29622 ?        S      3:05 /usr/sbin/smbd -D
29624 ?        S      2:04 /usr/sbin/smbd -D



[colinjones]

Workgroups are "created" by a machine being in one. Put your ms machines in that workgroup then reboot LMCE - that should trigger Master Browser election events in your Windows System event logs - should at least tell you if LMCE is even trying to participate in that workgroup (actually, will test this on my setup in the morning, too!)

[jondecker76]

Tried setting an XP machine to workgroup LinuxMCE and rebooted. Still noting - just a workgroup can't be found error....

[colinjones]

Now I have no idea what is going on! Workgroups don't need to "exist" - putting a PC in one "creates" it, it isn't like a domain where there is a central authority to register with (and therefore "find")... sure you're not trying to add the machine to a domain rather than a workgroup? Its just a radio button option between the two in the same dialogue that you set the name....

Either way, to reset the whole thing, you can set the PC's workgroup name to something that has never been used before, click OK, allow it to reboot, then set it back to the LinuxMCE workgroup, OK and reboot again. Did you check your system event log for Computer Browser events confirming that the browsers are "forcing elections" when you change these things, or even reboot a machine on the same broadcast domain? There are segment browsers, master browsers, backup browsers, etc, and they all collaborate to compile a complete list of the workgroups and computers in the network... can get complicated, and it maybe nothing to do with the issue, but having them all talking correctly and able to find each other at a NetBIOS level will probably help when they are trying to confirm credentials (even if that is just guest, and there are no restrictions....)

[jondecker76]

Yeah, it was a workgroup and not a domain. Also, should the workgroup be LinuxMCE or LMCE?

The thing that still doesn't make sense is that everything disappeared from both my Windows and my Linux machines (running Ubuntu). In ubuntu, browsing the network used to show a MSHOME workgroup and a LINUXMCE workgroup, now only MSHOME is present.

My Windows machines I never use anyway (My Touchscreen orbiters are XP machines, which I never had set to the LINUXMCE workgroup anyways, as they are only used for orbiters. But I have seen the LINUXMCE workgroup listed on these XP machines before, and they are not there either)

My Ubuntu boxes still get the NFS shares, but I'm not sure how to use them..  I get access denied whenever I try to do anything with them.

So we're still stuck now, unable to upload photos etc to the core easily (for now I have to ssh to the core, scp the media, change permissions etc.. what a pain!)

Also, we just recently swapped our network interfaces because of my onboard NIC uses forcedeth which caused many crashes. I wonder if this has anything to do with the shares disappearing?

[colinjones]

can't remember at the mo... gotta go to bed, tired! As I say, those "lists" of workgroups/computers are compiled by the computer browser services - you Need to look in that even log and make sure that this subsystem is working at all. Something could have screwed it completely and so nothing would be there.... restarting the Computer Browser service on any of your PCs will trigger an election event so you can see what is happening in that log.

Either way, not being able to browse the network using this Computer Browser service doesn't mean you can't connect directly to the share if you know it. \\computername\sharename or \\IPaddress\sharename or smb://computername/share name

Or even doing a NET VIEW \\computername from your PCs and they should show the NetBIOS resources available on the remote machine you choose. None of that is dependant on Computer Browsing working.... nite

[Zaerc]

Ok at least it all seems to be running, what do "smbstatus" and "smbclient -L dcerouter" (just hit enter when asked for a password) tell you?