Just to confirm, once you installed the samba utils, did you restart the system? I know most people don't, but in errors like these, I think a reboot to make sure the links to all the newly installed utils setup correctly may be in order.
Samba seems to be looking in /etc/samba for files, but that location doesn't exist. Something is missing, somewhere.
I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling samba a few times from cli, but I get the same result - Can't load /etc/samba/smb.conf (because the /etc/samba location doesn't exist).
I tried reinstalling:
sudo apt install samba -y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
samba is already the newest version (2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.6).
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 1 not to upgrade.
And then install again. If this still doesn't create the file for you, try creating the file yourself. This is the default configuration file that it created for me:
# users profiles (see the "logon path" option above)
# (you need to configure Samba to act as a domain controller too.)
# The path below should be writable by all users so that their
# profile directory may be created the first time they log on
;[profiles]
; comment = Users profiles
; path = /home/samba/profiles
; guest ok = no
; browseable = no
; create mask = 0600
; directory mask = 0700
[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = no
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = yes
create mask = 0700
# Windows clients look for this share name as a source of downloadable
# printer drivers
[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
browseable = yes
read only = yes
guest ok = no
# Uncomment to allow remote administration of Windows print drivers.
# You may need to replace 'lpadmin' with the name of the group your
# admin users are members of.
# Please note that you also need to set appropriate Unix permissions
# to the drivers directory for these users to have write rights in it
; write list = root, @lpadmin
Thanks. It needed an additional step which I found on ubuntu forums. Just doing the purge samba wasn't enough - it reinstalled back to the error condition.
I'm not seeing a reference to this in the steps you've linked to. I have installed wsdd to enable windows discovery.
I'm now at a stage where the Windows machine still can't see my shared folder but if I type in the address specifically smb:///shared then it picks it up. i enter user and password, and then get 'you do not have permission'. Sorry, can't give the exact wording at the moment as its the weekend, I'm not near that PC.
I've tried with some folders set to share using the GUI in nautilus, and also with setting it up with another folder directly in smb.conf
I'll post exact details tomorrow if I still can't get it.
I'm happy - the samba network is now picked up on my partner's also-Zorin notebook, and following several reboots, the Windows10 also picks it up perfectly.
Strangely its only the shared folder I created in the samba configuration file which is being picked up; the folder I'd shared using nautilus sharing (which used to be visible on the linux machine) is now no longer visible on anything.
Thats fine, so long as I have one working and can replicate it. I can now share these work files between Zorin and Windows.
Thanks all for the pointers along the way. I think the key was that Windows needed a couple of reboots and a good talking to before it worked.
This is most likely due to the fact that Nautilus brings its own implementation of the SMB protocol. Once you install or use a specific configuration file, it's probably using that as it's finding it first before whatever internal file Nautilus is using.
Anyway, I'm glad you got it working. As far as I know, the newer versions of Nautilus (specifically starting with Gnome 47) will have much better support on this front. We'll have to wait a bit to see them in Zorin OS, however.