Episode 59: Home Servers Part 5: File and Print Servers

[Chess]

In this episode: a mention of some excellent free audio books from Podiobooks.com, including ones from Scott Sigler, as well as the novels The Immortals, Singularity, How to Succeed in Evil Volume One, Brave Men Run, and Shadowmagic; a discussion of print servers on Debian Etch using CUPS and file servers using Samba; audio and email feedback.

http://www.linuxreality.com/podcast/episode-59-home-servers-part-5-file-and-print-servers/

[mattmole]

Hi Chess,

After the last episode I made a comment about something in the episode. I have since realised that I have never thanked you for the podcast! Good work sir! I listen every week and although I have done a lot of what you discuss it is really great to hear some of your little hints that I have never thought of!

You have an enormous knowledge and it is great of you to share it with others. Im sure all of the listeners learn a lot!

Matt 

[jza]

Great this server's topics are great. Kee up the good work.

[JHalstead]

Perfect timing on this one.  I'm currently wanting to do exactly this, a desktop and laptop with file server.  Great podcast Chess!  Also, with Scott and JC just finishing up their books for a bit i was looking for more.  I think I'll check out a few you suggest here.  Again, thanks for this episode.

[taspinner]

Great podcasts -- I downloaded everything you had and finally caught up.  Well, ...I'm only one episode down now.   I have been running home Linux servers for years, and through your encouragement, I am finally trying Linux on the desktop.  Thank you!

During #59, you mentioned web based contact managers, similar to what Webcalendar brings to calendaring.  I found Webcalendar and have been using it prior to this episode, but I have not found any contact managers of the same caliber.  Any recommendations?

[sewmyheadon]

As always, terrific show, Sir!  Wonderful audio comments and very timely info for me too.

Thanks again for your inspirational contribution to the FLOSS community.

It's SO awesome to see the community here growing.  Excitement for, and participation in, Linux and Open Source seems at an all-time high.  I'm happy to be part of it in some small way.

[JHalstead]

Success, I got my file server working between both my boxes.  You're great Chess.  Keep up the great work.  Cannot wait for the next episode.

[Zankul]

I have not made it through the episode all the way yet but I would also like to mention another podiobook that I am listening too.  Daughter of the Sun by Lonnie Ezell. It is a very good book so far. I have also listened to Seventh Son, Infection and Ancestor thanks to Chess for mentioning Seventh Son. I am loving the NetCast Chess, Keep it up.

[dwbell]

I'm ripping my hair out trying to get my computers to talk! I had ths all working for a long time using Suse, but switched distros and now I'm out of luck.. I really want to get this going soon as I'm adding a mythtv/backup machine on Friday.

Here's the situation as it now stands...
I have 2 machines:
1 for me and the wife running Kubuntu, named kubuntu. Static IP is 192.168.15.2.
1 machine for the kids running edubuntu, named kids-ubuntu. Static IP is 192.168.15.3
the workgroup is mshome (just for the irony)

kubuntu, using Konqueror, can see the workgroup mshome but when I open it I don't see anything. Eventually it pops up an error "Time out on server mshome"

kids-ubuntu using gnome I go places->network and I can see kubuntu, click on it and I can see the shared folders but if I try and open any shared folders I recieve an error message "The folder contents could not be displayed. Sorry, couldn't display all the contents of "folder_name".

I do have the same user name and password on both machines and for samba.
Any suggestions?

The smb.conf files can be found here:
www.darylbell.com/kubuntu_smb.conf
www.darylbell.com/kids-ubuntu_smb.conf

Thanks
Daryl

[Chess]

Daryl,

I have only taken a quick look, but one thing that I noticed is that the word "browseable" in your shares at the bottom of the smb.conf file is misspelled.  Not sure if that's it, but that might be part of it.  I'll see if I can spot anything else when I have a moment.

[dwbell]

Strange, gnome's shared documents tool generated that without the e... I've corrected the spelling and restarted samba but nothing has changed.

Thanks for taking the time to help me out. I really enjoy the podcast. The home server series combined with stumbling onto a beautiful HTPC without Windows at the local computer shop is what has inspired the Mythtv / backup / DNS server.

[Chess]

I have the following in my smb.conf at the bottom where I define the shares:

[data]
comment = data drive
path = data
valid users = @users
force group = users
create mask = 0660
directory mask = 0771
writable = yes
browseable = yes

The "data" stuff is just the name of my share and path.  yours will be different.  But maybe some of the other lines might help. 

[dwbell]

I made the changes above on the kubuntu machine, and saw no improvement. Then from kubuntu I tried entering smb://mshome in the adress bar of Konqueror rather than selecting Samba from the 'Network Folders' menu. And Voila! I can read and write to my /home on kids-ubuntu.

Unfortunately the kids are using their computer now and I need to go to bed. I'll try the other direction tomorrow.

This happened with Kubuntu Fiesty / KDE 3.5.7 any idea if this should be reported to KDE or Kubuntu? I don't know if Kubuntu will be too worried about it as KDE 3.5.7 is an unsupported update.

**Edit** Chess, This reminds me of your network printing issue with Debian!

[dwbell]

Just a quick update. Edubuntu still can't browse into shared folders on kubuntu, but can see kubuntu and the shared folders. I haven't had a chance to investigate any further and won't until Friday or Saturday. It's not such a rush now however as the PC I was going to pick up this weekend to act as a MythTV and fileserver sold and I'll now be ordering parts to build my own.

[dwbell]

I thought I'd say thanks for the help and announce my samba trouble as unfixed but no longer applicable. The guts of my desktop machine are going to be going into the HTPC case on order and will see a fresh install of ubuntu and mythtv. The internals originally planned for the mythtv will be going into the desktop. Hard drives have to move because the old MB doesn't have SATA. I realized yesterday how silly it was to have the most powerfull computer (by far) doing Myth/server duty.

Thanks for the help, hopefully the next round goes smoother so I'm not back here pestering you again.