Did my best to search for similar issues but wasn’t successful. My setup is a Windows 11 computer trying to access samba host on a lubuntu virtual machine. The VM network is bridged with a Manjaro host and works in other aspects.
In fact I’m able to access the fileshare using IP-address/sharename. To be clear: The issue is not that I can’t see the shares. The issue is that I can’t even open the host and it immediately gives the “Windows Cannot Access” error.
Is this some kind of netbios issue? I’ve enable NETBIOS over TCP/IP on the windows PC which I believe I saw as a suggestion somewhere.
I found this:
https www samba org/samba/docs/current/man-html/smb.conf.5.html
But there are 68 hits for NETBIOS. I tried:
dns proxy = yes
and
mdns name = netbios
but neither seemed to help.
Both machines are in the same workgroup.
Do I need to make samba a WINS server? That’s seems archaic. I’m at a loss. Thank you for whatever help you can provide.
Edit: Also, the linux samba host is running wsdd and wsdd-server which may be relevant.
Edit: If I delete the log.hostname of the windows PC in /var/log/samba and try to connect again, the log reappears. So the linux box is seeing something.
OK rather than editing yet again, I’m making a comment.
So I created a user on the linux box with username and password matching that of the windows PC and added to the smb database with sudo smbpasswd -a username. Now when I open the linux host from the Windows Network view, it goes right in. I was expecting it to prompt me for credentials like it does on an actual Windows PC with filesharing.
Can I make it do this? Is there maybe a way to give guest access only to the “root share”?
Nice tutorial. Very thorough unlike others I’ve seen.
But I think you missed
In fact I’m able to access the fileshare using IP-address/sharename.
I didn’t explicitly say so but I absolutely did add the user to samba with smbpasswd -a
The issue was that before adding the matching user and password in samba, it did not challenge for credentials when trying to browse to it from windows Network view. Double-clicking on the icon for the samba host spits out
Windows cannot access \\VIRTUALUBUNTU
What I’ve just discovered though is that if I type in \\VIRTUALUBUNTU (UNC) in the address bar and hit enter it DOES challenge me. Clearly the name resolution is working. Also since I get the following from log.windowshostname with log level 3 when windows gets the error:
[2026/01/18 11:56:44.307492, 3] source3/auth/pampass.c:475(smb_pam_end)
smb_pam_end: PAM: PAM_END OK.
[2026/01/18 11:56:44.307610, 3] source3/smbd/server_exit.c:230(exit_server_common)
Server exit (NT_STATUS_CONNECTION_RESET)
So I’m thinking then that this is strange behaviour on the part of Windows rather than samba. It’s unfortunate since I’d like to be able to open from the hostname icon and right-click to map the share. I’m just trying to learn samba and imagining a scenario supporting and end user who wants to map a drive.
If you have any more insight I’d love to hear it, otherwise I’m happy to mark this resolved.
EDIT: Neither UFW nor firewalld are active
wsdd-server and avahi-daemon are both running
This uses a mix of mostly proprietary Windows network discovery protocols, that I have never bothered to learn. I never could access a share this way over samba. (It’s either impossible, or there’s extra setup involved.)
This is the way you should be doing it.
If you want to save it, you map a drive letter to that UNC. You can just do that in Explorer.