WANTED: Someone with Share problems after 2.01.86 that can run Wireshark

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
21

ncarver:  You are right!!  Completely overlooked that distinction.

I think, though, that it’s using Samba to discover and browse the network, right?   the CIFSfs is only used when mounting what’s been discovered.

What most people are reporting is a discovery failure, not a failure to connect to visible shares.

22

yeah, so like I said

cifs.ko is only used for mounting the share

but it doesn’t have any ability to find what shares are available

the WD has 4 components available for samba

nmbd

smbd

smbclient

cifs.ko

nmbd in particular is used to locate available samba shares on the network

once it’s located arguments must be passed to cifs.ko and shares mounted

the WD does not actually browse smb shares via nmbd

once located, it attempts to mount using cifs.ko

as best I can tell, this is done by dmaosd, one of the closed source binaries

once mounted it’s browsable, just like any local filesystem

which is what you see in the gui , it’s the mounted content found under /tmp/media/samba/…

23

TonyPh12345 wrote:

ncarver:  You are right!!  Completely overlooked that distinction.

 

I think, though, that it’s using Samba to discover and browse the network, right?   the CIFSfs is only used when mounting what’s been discovered.

 

What most people are reporting is a discovery failure, not a failure to connect to visible shares.

 

at this point, I’m not sure what is failing

the discovery

or the mounting activity

the WD will not display anything that it can’t mount

so either way

discovery fails - no shares available

discovery succeeds but mounting fails - no shares available

edit: never mind, you’re right it’s discovery failure

because the WD presents a list for users to select

it’s once selected that share gets mounted

and in this case most users are not getting any list of shares at all

24

KAD79: Right about browsing/locating shares.  Wish the SMPs would allow you to simply enter IP/hostname of smb servers!

I thought nmbd was the Samba name server for smb.  I.e., a server.  That is certainly what its man page says (on my server machine).  You certainly can browse smb shares with_out_ nmbd being installed.  And again, there is no evidence of nmbd running on my two SMPs (no open UDP ports 137-139, which is what the nmbd uses on my server).

25

nmbd does netbios name resolution for both server and client functions

smbd does the actual file transfers, etc

smbclient is similiar to a ftp client but for smb protocol - nice to have it but not actually needed

cifs.ko does the filesystem mounting

26

I just bought my unit. I’m having problems with a Windows 8.1 computer. I have the share and security wide open. I’m using a Workgroup. I connect to the ip/share. The computer shows up and then disappears. Since the computer disappears, so does the share. I did have two domain controllers but took all of that out of the picture. No DNS, no wins, no domain controller. Firewall is off.

Thank you for the explanation about how it searches for shares. I will try the suggestions using the lmhosts file and changing the netbios setting in separate tests. I will report back and let you know what I find out.

I have Wireshark but am not a beginner on how to use it.

27

dbaps wrote:

I just bought my unit. I’m having problems with a Windows 8.1 computer. I have the share and security wide open. I’m using a Workgroup. I connect to the ip/share. The computer shows up and then disappears. Since the computer disappears, so does the share. I did have two domain controllers but took all of that out of the picture. No DNS, no wins, no domain controller. Firewall is off.

 

Thank you for the explanation about how it searches for shares. I will try the suggestions using the lmhosts file and changing the netbios setting in separate tests. I will report back and let you know what I find out.

 

I have Wireshark but am not a beginner on how to use it.

well if tony’s still willing to anaylze the packet captures that would be great

additionally, doing some un-related stuff

I found a couple of additional smb related binaries

located at /bin/smb_get_servers

what’s odd about this, it’s an undocumented binary, not found in the smb docs

which would indicate it’s something custom put together and compiled for the WD

there’s still nothing that would indicate which binary dmaosd is using to get smb servers

maybe the source code WD releases would indicate which is used, but I haven’t look at it

but this new binary concearns me, because it would be a custom implementation

which certainly may have any number of bugs

28

Sorry, of course I meant I am a beginner. :flushed:

Off topic but I did not know of the change in SMB for Macs until starting to research the three protocols using my Qnap Nas. It’s very interesting how Apple wrote a different version of SMB for Lion and now has dropped this approach and is supporting SMB 2.0. This is wonderful news for people with both Macs and Windows computers. I have to wonder if this shift is due to the philosophy of Steve Jobs and the changes made since his passing.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/06/11/apple-shifts-from-afp-file-sharing-to-smb2-in-os-x-109-mavericks

"For OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple wrote its own software for Windows File Sharing under the name “SMBX” to replace Samba, adding initial support for Microsoft’s SMB2 at the same time.

Rather than maintaining both AFP and SMBX in parallel, Apple is now consolidating its future efforts in its own implementation of Microsoft’s SMB2 protocol. Macs running OS X 10.9 Mavericks will use SMB2 as their default file sharing protocol when connecting to each other or to PCs running Windows Vista, 7 or 8"

29

Before saying this I am not a networking expert.

To get the Windows shares to work on Windows 8.1, I had to do two things:

Change the binding order so that IPV4 is before IPV6

Change the Netbios setting from default to Netbios over TCP/IP

I do not have a DNS server, a domain controller, or a WINS server. I do have a homegroup and workgroup.

I tried each of these settings individually and it did not work. Authentication failed each time. When I had IPV6 first in the binding order, the Window computer would show up sometimes in the Windows shares list under setup:content resource:network share. Also after testing on and off several times, I ended up getting a message that said I had reached the limit of the number of allowed shares like it was keeping a share list that was ghosted and did not show up properly. I rebooted the WD live streaming box and that message went away when creating a new share.

I have IPV6 on because I’m using a Homegroup. I did not try setting only one of the two binding orders on the network device which are either “file and print sharing for Microsoft networks” or “Client for Microsoft Networks.” I don’t know if one or both are required.

I tried turning the firewall off and that had no impact. I already have an inbound and outbound rule for the media server.

Anything else you want me to try?

30

I’d be surprised if you don’t have a dns server

generally your router will handle dns queries for lan

but changing the default netbios setting is probably a good indicator

of some info already discussed

I think my new default answer for problems with windows shares will be to change the netbios setting to TCP over IP

31

I have external DNS ip’s defined.  I’m speaking of running DNS myself, which I was doing until I took the domain controllers down and switched to a homegroup.

Semantics I guess…yes, I am using DNS…