[CentOS] Samba shares not appearing

Mon Mar 16 16:59:31 UTC 2015
Niki Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr>

Le 16/03/2015 10:18, Earl A Ramirez a écrit :
> I replicated your settings on a CentOS 7 on a KVM, I did not see the
> samba server when I click on "Browse Network", however when I enter
> smb://<server_IP_address>/ I was able to see the shares.
>
> If Im not mistaken the 'nmb' service is responsible for browsing,
> therefore I stopped it and I was not longer able to see the shares from
> a windows or samba client.
>
> What is the output of:
> $ smbclient -L <samba_server_host-or-IP> -U <samba_user>
> from one of the samba clients?

OK, I experimented some more, and here's what I got.

I replaced the system on the two sandbox client machines by a standard 
"vanilla" CentOS+GNOME desktop. At first I couldn't browse any samba 
shares, but then I figured out that the standard desktop configuration 
blocks some outgoing ports in the firewall. So I simply disabled the 
firewall, and I could browse the shares, connect to them, create files 
and directories, etc. Which means the server setup looks OK so far. I 
did edit one minor detail in my smb.conf:

[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = Serveur de fichiers AMANDINE
netbios name = amandine
dns proxy = yes
domain master = yes

I moved the netbios name from uppercase to lowercase, after a bit of RTFM.

Now the desktop client setups I usually install start from a quite 
stripped-down GNOME configuration. I described the installation process 
here:

https://kikinovak.wordpress.com/poste-de-travail/

It essentially installs to 1. install the base system and configure it. 
2. install X11 and configure WindowMaker 3. Install a minimal GNOME and 
a collection of selected applications.

On such a minimal client, I have these Samba packages installed:

[root at bernadette:~] # rpm -qa | grep samba
samba-common-4.1.1-38.el7_0.x86_64
samba-client-4.1.1-38.el7_0.x86_64
samba-libs-4.1.1-38.el7_0.x86_64

Unfortunately I can neither browse any Samba shares, nor connect to them 
directly. So something else must be missing, but what?

Cheers,

Niki

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