Samba problem: Comp. 2 can see Comp 1, but Comp. 1 can't see Comp 2

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1

Until recently, my 3 main computers could all “see” each other over my home network:

  1. Excalibur (dsktp. PC, Manjaro Linux)
  2. Square Rigger (dsktp. PC, Manjaro Linux)
  3. Ketch (notebook, MS Win 10)

However, about two weeks ago, Square Rigger became invisible to the other two computers, though they are visible to it.

By “Visible”, I mean that each computer could access specifically-shared directories on the other two. This was accomplished by Samba sharing (outbound) and CIFS mounting on lines in “/etc/fstab” (inbound).

But about two weeks ago, attempts to mount Square Rigger’s shared directories in Excalibur – say, “sudo mount /home/aragorn/net/SR/Lothlorien” – suddenly starting producing “mount error(13): Permission denied” errors. Whereas doing the opposite – getting on Square Rigger and doing “sudo mount /home/aragorn/net/EX/Celephais” – works fine.

So I did “sudo systemctl status smb.service” on both computers, with drastically different results:

Excalibur accepts connection from Square-Rigger:

accepting-user-aragorn
accepting-user-aragorn1179×601 115 KB

But Square-Rigger rejects connection from Excalibur with PAM errors:

rejecting-user-aragorn
rejecting-user-aragorn1238×635 142 KB

So, what could be causing this?

2

Please do not post screenshots of text - you know better :grin:

Clearly the user is rejected.

Could be a password change which is not synced to samba.

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3

I don’t see why not. Saves a lot of time, prevents typos, and preserves formatting, colors, non-text markings, etc.

Yes. But the real questions are “Why?” (something to do with that “unknown PAM error”?) and “What can be done about it?”.

That’s the first thing I thought, but no, that isn’t it. I made sure that OS user “aragorn” and Samba user “aragorn” both have the same password on both machines. And, passwords have not changed, and yet Square-Rigger stopped accepting incoming connections about 2 weeks ago. So it’s apparently not a password issue. Something else is going on, but I can’t tell what.

4

because images uses more server storage and bandwidth than pure text and you achieve the same result but it is searchable.

Check if you have AppArmor installed and activated.

AppArmor is know to disturb samba occasionally.

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5

I just went through a similar issue adding a brand new Manjaro machine to my home network. I had the “smb_pam_account: PAM: UNKNOWN PAM ERROR (9)…” errors and it was super frustrating. I used the AppArmor commands I got from one of @linux-aarhus guides.

I’d be curious to know if that fixes your situation.