[arch-general] Intermittent problem accessing samba shares

[Joost Janssen]

Hey Paul,

I've had a similar issue where my samba connections went dead after a
while.

Disabling your samba server's autodisconnect timeout might help:
Run the following command in an Administrator cmd box to completely turn
off the autodisconnect timeout:


*net config server /autodisconnect:-1*
*Source: *
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/048e504d-c8d5-4eae-b5a5-e367797a2bca/shares-do-not-stay-connected?forum=winservergen

Regards,

Joost

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 1:59 AM, Paul Marwick via arch-general <
arch-general at archlinux.org> wrote:

> Fully updated Arch install, running Xfce. I don't use Samba very much, but
> need it for access at various times, so I have gvfs, gvfs-smb and smbclient
> installed. Normally no problem accessing Samba shares from Thunar.
> However....
>
> Recently I spent some time trying to work out why a client was unable to
> access Samba shares from an Xubuntu desktop machine (shares are on an
> Ubuntu 16.04 server). While I was testing, I did something (wish I knew
> what...) and ended up with Thunar suddenly being unable to access any Samba
> share, even though I could use mount.cifs to mount the same share.
>
> When I got back to my home network, I found similar problems, even though
> I'd never had any problems in that area with this install of Arch. At the
> same time, another Arch install on the same laptop had no problems
> accessing the shares, and my desktop machine was also still able to access
> the shares without any problems.
>
> The problem is strange and very variable. Sometimes it fails as soon as I
> click "browse network" - the system sits and then comes back with 'unable
> to access "/" timeout was reached'. Sometimes I get a display of the
> Windows network icon, then it fails to open the Windows network display.
> Other times, I am able to see and mount a share on the network. This is on
> the same network, with no changes made to the network (one Slackware-based
> server, one Ubuntu 16.04 server). And a network which other Arch installs
> have no problems accessing the shares.
>
> I've checked messages using journalctl  and dmesg and see nothing when the
> access fails. The part I find really puzzling is that sometimes it works
> with any problems, other times it fails as soon as I start.
>
> I'm confident that the prolbem is not Thunar itself. I installed pcmanfm
> to see if a different file manager would behave differently, but it shows
> exactly the same problem - sometimes it works, other times it fails.
>
> I'm at a loss as to how I track this error. I'd really like to fix it, so
> I'm hoping someone can suggest what might cause the problem, and how to fix
> it?
>
> I've seen problems like this in the past (mainly on Debian based distros,
> though a few years ago on an Arch install). One of a very small number of
> problems I've never been able to predictably fix.
>
> Paul.
>