Buffalo Nas + Zorin

[doobre]

Hi there
I tried swapping the sharename for the IP address of the Nas, in the fstab and the /media/ directory

//192.168.#.###/Share_4 /media/192.168.#.###_Share_4 cifs username=plex,password=plex,vers=1.0,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
result > same issue, either "Permission Denied" or "cannot retrieve list of shares" in the file manager.

I tested various permutations of the commend in the "Connect to Server" box of the file manager (Nautilus) to clarify the slash and case conditions.
smb://ls220d21e/share_4/ - lowercase > worked
smb://LS220D21E/Share_4/ - Uppercase > worked (Nautilus change the name to lowercase automatically)

smb://ls220d21e\share_4/ - lowercase > no go
smb://LS220D21E\Share_4/ - Uppercase > no go

So the share name format is definitely:
smb://mount-name/share-name/ >regardless of the character case.

When used in terminal mount command:

zcdadmin@zcdadmin-HP-Z210-Workstation:~$ mount /media/ls220d21e_Share_4
mount: /media/ls220d21e_Share_4: can't find in /etc/fstab.

zcdadmin@zcdadmin-HP-Z210-Workstation:~$ mount /media/LS220D21E_Share_4
mount.cifs: permission denied

So the share name format for my fstab file is definitely the second format:
//"MOUNT-POINT in UPPERCASE/share-name is exact shared folder name

and it seems to me that the issue I have is a permissions issue.

I might try setting the Nas to use DHCP, instead of static IP's.!!!?

cheers CD

[zenzen]

Is it just one of the shares that is not working, or all of them? If it's all of them, let's just focus on one at the time to keep things nice and tidy here.

The format for each entry should be as follows, with 2 forward slashes at the beginning, and a single forward slash separating each segment of the path where the share is located in that server. Following with the previous example:

//LS220D21E/Share_4 /media/LS220D21E_Share_4 cifs username=plex,password=plex,vers=1.0,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

You can pass the nocase option to force it to be case-insensitive, but be careful if you have similar names to avoid confusion. Note that this only applies to the first field, specifying the host and path to the shared folder, and not the mount point in your local file system.

Try also removing the vers option entirely. Normally this should be negotiated automatically to use the highest common version supported by both client and server. If that doesn't work, try with other versions like 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, and so on.
You might find some more details about which protocols and versions are supported in the manual for your NAS or by exploring the dashboard.

@doobre

I might try setting the Nas to use DHCP, instead of static IP's.!!!?

It won't hurt to try, but leave that as a last resort. It's best to change things one at the time to see where the problem is.

PS: I've edited your previous post for clarity. When pasting commands or output from the terminal or formatted text, you can use the Preformatted Text button in the WYSIWYG (the one with </> icon).

[doobre]

@zenzen

Is it just one of the shares that is not working, or all of them? If it's all of them, let's just focus on one at the time to keep things nice and tidy here.

Hi there, thanks for your reply.
It is only the the Nas shares that are not working. The win10 PC's shares are fine. I have been concentrating on the LS220d21e for testing.

I understand about making changes in the fstab and will do that after checking. But remember that all the shares were working fine before yesterday, I changed the IP to a static IP, then back again, no diff.

The Nas' only work on smb v1 & 2, but I have to keep them on v1 because the OPPO network players only work with v1.

Weirdly, with specifying "smb3" for max and min in the smb.conf the Nas were happy, until yesterday.

I will change smb.conf back to v1 (which is called "NT1") and I have seen a post here that mentioned that updating Nautilus did the job for them

So, I will get back to you later on.
cheers CD

[zenzen]

Did you run any upgrades recently? There was a significant change not too long ago that broke some client connections. One way to get this sorted out is to rollback to the previous versions of the SMB libraries.

More details here:

Latest update (8/17/25) broke SMB (Samba) networking with Windows

Just to clarify this: Do you mean that you've lost connectivity to the network drives, or you can't connect to the internet at all? Unfortunately, rolling back updates is not as straight forward as it could be. For that, you'd need to install a dedicated program that can do this for you. After you get this sorted, I suggest looking into Timeshift. You can "downgrade" a package by running the install command, specifying the exact version that you want to install. To find out which version wa…

To check the current package versions you can run:

apt list --installed | grep -iE '(smb|samba)'

[doobre]

Hi there thanks for your reply.
Clarify - I only have a problem mounting the NAS shares 'automatically' at booting up.
ONLY the 'automatic' part is not working.

Everything else is fine, Internet is fine, all local network devices are fine.
All shares on the windows PC's connect at booting up, automatically.

Manually typing ex: "smb://ls220d21e/Share_4" address in the "connect to server" box of Nautilus does mount the Nas. All 4 of them.

I can add a bookmark for the Nas shares and they work also.

---

Yes, I have used the software updater several times since I installed and also recently after I encountered this problem, cifs and samba in particular, through the sudo command. and other software as well.

The terminal responce to " apt list --installed | grep -iE '(smb|samba)' " shows:

libsmbclient/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.8 amd64 [installed,automatic]
python3-samba/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.8 amd64 [installed,automatic]
samba-common-bin/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.8 amd64 [installed,automatic]
samba-common/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.8 all [installed,automatic]
samba-libs/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.8 amd64 [installed,automatic]
samba/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.8 amd64 [installed]
smbclient/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.8 amd64 [installed]
vlc-plugin-samba/jammy,now 3.0.16-1build7 amd64 [installed,automatic]

hope that this is helpful

I'm thinking about reinstalling Zorin from scratch! cheers CD

[doobre]

UPDATE - one Nas is now connecting a bootup. yeehar!

Now I am sure that the prob is with the Nas themselves, and not with the configuration files in Zorin. (which had been not changed)

The samba update may have done something, I will follow the steps to rollbck if necessary.

Q. what did the terminal reply to [apt list --installed | grep -iE '(smb|samba)'] in my earlier post tell you?

I will concentrate on the Nas from now on, something has changed their config by changing to static IP, cos I was unable to access one of them on their own UI, with the "plex" user that is used especially for Plex Media server on Zorin to access the Nas.
The Nas' are old, but it's the newest one that is now working, so I need to do some more digging on them and not on Zorin.

So thank you for all your suggestions and advice.
cheers CD

[zenzen]

@doobre

UPDATE - one Nas is now connecting a bootup. yeehar!

Now I am sure that the prob is with the Nas themselves, and not with the configuration files in Zorin. (which had been not changed)

Well, I'm a big fan of "if it works, don't fix it!"

It's a little bizarre, though. As far as I can tell, everything seems fine, and the fact that you can connect through the file manager means that the connection works. I can only guess it's either the way the domain name is written (try all in lowercase, maybe?) or it needs a very specific version of SMB.

@doobre

The samba update may have done something, I will follow the steps to rollbck if necessary.

This might be a good idea if we can't figure out what's going on, but I'd like to avoid it. In theory, the only symptom from this bug report is that some connections might be lost, but all you should have to do is connect again, which you've done already.

@doobre

Q. what did the terminal reply to [apt list --installed | grep -iE '(smb|samba)'] in my earlier post tell you?

I wanted to see the version for the libraries libsmbclient and samba-libs. The issue that I was referring to earlier affects versions "0ubuntu1.7" and higher. In the off-chance that yours were lower than that, a recent update might have explained the issue, at least in part.

More specifically:

apt list --installed produces a list of installed packages. The pipe (|) passes this list to the following command, grep which filters results that contain the string "smb" or "samba". The flags iE mean: -i case-insensitive matching, and -E enables Extended regular expressions, which is what allows writing (smb|samba) to narrow down the results in one command.

[doobre]

Yeeharrr sorted...finally.

It was all caused by the buffalo Nas not being able to auto mount with a static IP, even though it has that option.
And they can only work on SMB1 = "NT1" in the samba world. (= Very old)

Using Winscp I made sure that the Nas were using smb v1 (required for my OPPO network players).
It took a couple of reboots of the Nas to get it straight, after re-initializing the Nas back to default (but keeping the data) adding again, the user that Plex Media Server needed and checking it was now using DHCP, the Nas' came back to life.

So if anyone else has this old hardware and linux can not get them to mount automatically at startup of the computer, don't waste your time tinkering with possible changes to 'fstab' and 'smb.conf', especially if you already know that these files are correct, just head straight to the Buffalo Nas for a full reset.
Cheers CD

[zenzen]

Nice, well at least now we know why happened I've marked your last post as the solution for the thread.