Mepis and networking
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Mepis and networking
A couple of nights ago, following some comments on here, I installed Mepis on the "Linux play PC", just to see if it's as good as folks have said.
It took under 30 minutes from "Start Installation" to "Running Mepis off the hard drive." That is very impressive, especially seeing as it's on a Pentium 800MHz old clunker. It found all my hardware except the SCSI drive: the SCSI card it found, but not the SCSI DVDROM. No big deal.
It goofed up the "multi-boot" Grub config that used to boot to Windows and the various other flavours of Linux - but that took under ten minutes to fix. Fortunately, I had copies of the old boot config file dotted about the various hard drives.
However, I just cannot get it to accept incoming network connections. Samba will connect from it to the other machines on the network with no problem, but there is no way it will allow those machines to access it. Since the machine's primary role is as a fileserver, that's a bit of a snag.
Fedora (the distro most used) networks fine, and did so from day 1. All the others do so, although I had fun with Debian - quite a long time ago: it may be easier to set up now.
But I cannot get Mepis to play. I'm a bit busy for the next few days, but will be having another dabble next week. If anyone who has got Mepis to work as a network server can tell me the trick, I'll be grateful. [I remember having to set up smbd -blahblah and nmbd -blahblah boot-up stuff in Debian a few years ago - might that be the answer here?]
The Midi player facilities don't work in Mepis either, but that's not exactly on the priorities list.
It took under 30 minutes from "Start Installation" to "Running Mepis off the hard drive." That is very impressive, especially seeing as it's on a Pentium 800MHz old clunker. It found all my hardware except the SCSI drive: the SCSI card it found, but not the SCSI DVDROM. No big deal.
It goofed up the "multi-boot" Grub config that used to boot to Windows and the various other flavours of Linux - but that took under ten minutes to fix. Fortunately, I had copies of the old boot config file dotted about the various hard drives.
However, I just cannot get it to accept incoming network connections. Samba will connect from it to the other machines on the network with no problem, but there is no way it will allow those machines to access it. Since the machine's primary role is as a fileserver, that's a bit of a snag.
Fedora (the distro most used) networks fine, and did so from day 1. All the others do so, although I had fun with Debian - quite a long time ago: it may be easier to set up now.
But I cannot get Mepis to play. I'm a bit busy for the next few days, but will be having another dabble next week. If anyone who has got Mepis to work as a network server can tell me the trick, I'll be grateful. [I remember having to set up smbd -blahblah and nmbd -blahblah boot-up stuff in Debian a few years ago - might that be the answer here?]
The Midi player facilities don't work in Mepis either, but that's not exactly on the priorities list.
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Sorted it. The Networking Setup utilities in Mepis are as cr@p as the ones that come with most other flavours of Linux.
In the end, I edited smb.conf manually, and all is now accling as it should.
Fortunately, I'd kept notes of the changes I'd made with Debian (all those years ago) to get it to work as part of a Windows local area network with disk and file sharing.
That done, it's good. Most stuff is easier to configure than in previous Linuxes. Only the SCSI DVD drive and the Midi are still not working. Mepis probably is newer than SCSI, and who uses Midi these days...
In the end, I edited smb.conf manually, and all is now accling as it should.
Fortunately, I'd kept notes of the changes I'd made with Debian (all those years ago) to get it to work as part of a Windows local area network with disk and file sharing.
That done, it's good. Most stuff is easier to configure than in previous Linuxes. Only the SCSI DVD drive and the Midi are still not working. Mepis probably is newer than SCSI, and who uses Midi these days...
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Hi, Keef,
Overall I think you'll be impressed with SM 6.0. Only just seen your post. Haven't networked PCs at domestic level, but pleased you've got it sorted. Have you registered with the MEPIS support forums?
http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/index.php
Overall I think you'll be impressed with SM 6.0. Only just seen your post. Haven't networked PCs at domestic level, but pleased you've got it sorted. Have you registered with the MEPIS support forums?
http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/index.php
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I wish you hadn't told me that 
I've just spent rather too much time browsing the Mepis forum! What with Fedora and Suse and Ubuntu forums, it's all getting to be too much education.
What I'm finding is that most of the problems I have are the same with most versions of Linux. Sometimes, one distro breezes straight past what was a total nightmare with another. On the whole, the fix that worked with one will work with another (if I can remember what I did - which is where my little notebooks come in handy).
Anyway, the same settings in smb.conf seem to work with Debian, Fedora and Mepis. That made it very easy.
I've just spent rather too much time browsing the Mepis forum! What with Fedora and Suse and Ubuntu forums, it's all getting to be too much education.What I'm finding is that most of the problems I have are the same with most versions of Linux. Sometimes, one distro breezes straight past what was a total nightmare with another. On the whole, the fix that worked with one will work with another (if I can remember what I did - which is where my little notebooks come in handy).
Anyway, the same settings in smb.conf seem to work with Debian, Fedora and Mepis. That made it very easy.
Plastic PPRuNer
Hmmm... Just checked this out on SimplyMepis 6.0 and Keef is correct, there is a problem with user-based file sharing through Samba - I don't think it's actually a Mepis problem but I've emailed Warren about it.
I have a solution though, which is probably THE solution - here we go.
First of all, when it sets up, SimplyMepis defaults to simple file sharing a la XP (and Win98), with no authentication - what you share, you share with everyone and everyone can write to your shared directory. This is convenient but not very secure and is made worse because, for some bizarre reason, Mepis (like a lot of Linuxes) shares your Home directory (My Documents in Linus-speak) rather than a separate specific "Shared" directory.
This can be easily changed though, using the Mepis SAMBA configuration, which I actually find pretty straightforward. So far, so good.
Obviously just as in Windows, you need to set the same Workgroup, but that's taken care of in the configuration menu.
Going over to "Advanced" or user-based file sharing means creating a means of authentication - on a simple peer-to-peer network Windows merely authenticates you against the list of registered users of the machine, Linux however works differently.
In Linux you need to maintain a database of users, together with their access control rules. This database can be in various forms depending on whether you are using a small office network or a big enterprise. Previously the smbpasswd system was used and you just used the SAMBA control panel to add a new user. For simplicity's sake I always use my Windows logon/password pair.
For technical reasons Ubuntu (on which Mepis is based - out of Debian) seems to have recently moved over to preferring the tbdsam password backend to the smbpasswd backend and there is a bug.
The bug is that now the Add User panel doesn't work - you add a user and password but the user does NOT get added to the tdbsam database. So you're shafted, you can't work Samba with user-level access. This seems to have stopped a lot of people dead and I had to do quite a bit of poking around to find the answer.
The solution is to use the pdbedit command in a root terminal to add the user you want.
"The pdbedit program is used to manage the users accounts stored in the sam database and only be run by root. The pdbedit tool uses the passdb modular interface and is independent from the kind of users database used (currently there are smbpasswd, ldap, nis+ and tdb based and more can be added without changing the tool). There are five main ways to use pdbedit: adding a user account, removIng a user account, modifing a user account, listing user accounts, importing users accounts."
To see the list of users: pdbedit -L
To add Keef:
pdbedit -a -u keef
and pdbedit will popup and ask you for a password for keef - supply one and it's done - user keef created.
To see syntax: pdbedit -h
I'm not sure exactly where the bug is, in kcontrol (the KDE frontend)[does Gnome have the bug?], or Ubuntu , or even Debian itself, but wherever it is I hope it gets fixed quick 'cos that is the sort of thing that should never happen and gives Linux a bad name.
But at least there's an answer!
Mac
I have a solution though, which is probably THE solution - here we go.
First of all, when it sets up, SimplyMepis defaults to simple file sharing a la XP (and Win98), with no authentication - what you share, you share with everyone and everyone can write to your shared directory. This is convenient but not very secure and is made worse because, for some bizarre reason, Mepis (like a lot of Linuxes) shares your Home directory (My Documents in Linus-speak) rather than a separate specific "Shared" directory.
This can be easily changed though, using the Mepis SAMBA configuration, which I actually find pretty straightforward. So far, so good.
Obviously just as in Windows, you need to set the same Workgroup, but that's taken care of in the configuration menu.
Going over to "Advanced" or user-based file sharing means creating a means of authentication - on a simple peer-to-peer network Windows merely authenticates you against the list of registered users of the machine, Linux however works differently.
In Linux you need to maintain a database of users, together with their access control rules. This database can be in various forms depending on whether you are using a small office network or a big enterprise. Previously the smbpasswd system was used and you just used the SAMBA control panel to add a new user. For simplicity's sake I always use my Windows logon/password pair.
For technical reasons Ubuntu (on which Mepis is based - out of Debian) seems to have recently moved over to preferring the tbdsam password backend to the smbpasswd backend and there is a bug.
The bug is that now the Add User panel doesn't work - you add a user and password but the user does NOT get added to the tdbsam database. So you're shafted, you can't work Samba with user-level access. This seems to have stopped a lot of people dead and I had to do quite a bit of poking around to find the answer.
The solution is to use the pdbedit command in a root terminal to add the user you want.
"The pdbedit program is used to manage the users accounts stored in the sam database and only be run by root. The pdbedit tool uses the passdb modular interface and is independent from the kind of users database used (currently there are smbpasswd, ldap, nis+ and tdb based and more can be added without changing the tool). There are five main ways to use pdbedit: adding a user account, removIng a user account, modifing a user account, listing user accounts, importing users accounts."
To see the list of users: pdbedit -L
To add Keef:
pdbedit -a -u keef
and pdbedit will popup and ask you for a password for keef - supply one and it's done - user keef created.
To see syntax: pdbedit -h
I'm not sure exactly where the bug is, in kcontrol (the KDE frontend)[does Gnome have the bug?], or Ubuntu , or even Debian itself, but wherever it is I hope it gets fixed quick 'cos that is the sort of thing that should never happen and gives Linux a bad name.
But at least there's an answer!
Mac
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'Strewth Mac, how'd'you find that out? I'm impressed!
I won't do that now, because I already did a Keef-style "bodgit and run" fix, which does exactly what I want it to. I added a nice, simple few extra lines to smb.conf - and that was that! No ID, no password, just allow total access for anyone with an IP address on my LAN.
There's nobody else on my home network so I have no desire for added security (in fact, I prefer no security inside - the firewall in the router does a sterling job). I'd like to stop all the "give the root password" stuff - I reckon I type that about once a minute when I'm tweaking Linux stuff.
I suppose a clever hacker in my back garden might get past the security on the WiFi, but I'll live with that. I sat in the garden this afternoon, Skyping to number two daughter with the Ipaq. Then I realised I was using my next-door neighbour's WiFi connection
Good job we're all friends!
I won't do that now, because I already did a Keef-style "bodgit and run" fix, which does exactly what I want it to. I added a nice, simple few extra lines to smb.conf - and that was that! No ID, no password, just allow total access for anyone with an IP address on my LAN.
There's nobody else on my home network so I have no desire for added security (in fact, I prefer no security inside - the firewall in the router does a sterling job). I'd like to stop all the "give the root password" stuff - I reckon I type that about once a minute when I'm tweaking Linux stuff.
I suppose a clever hacker in my back garden might get past the security on the WiFi, but I'll live with that. I sat in the garden this afternoon, Skyping to number two daughter with the Ipaq. Then I realised I was using my next-door neighbour's WiFi connection
Good job we're all friends!
Plastic PPRuNer
Well, I reasoned that there HAD to be a way of editing tdbsam from the command line and took it from there.
This was reported as Bug #16575 in kdebase (Debian) - "Cannot create samba user with kcontrol samba module" in 2005 - https://launchpad.net/debian/+source/kdebase/+bug/16575 - !
From the reply on http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=293960 it seems to be a problem in KDE 3.5.1, "the Apply button is not enabled after adding a UNIX user."
Strange that such an important bug affecting a mixed OS environment has not been seemingly generated so little interest or been reported more.
Maybe KDE users just use simple file sharing all the time (no good for a serious environment).
I'm taking the matter further.
This was reported as Bug #16575 in kdebase (Debian) - "Cannot create samba user with kcontrol samba module" in 2005 - https://launchpad.net/debian/+source/kdebase/+bug/16575 - !
From the reply on http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=293960 it seems to be a problem in KDE 3.5.1, "the Apply button is not enabled after adding a UNIX user."
Strange that such an important bug affecting a mixed OS environment has not been seemingly generated so little interest or been reported more.
Maybe KDE users just use simple file sharing all the time (no good for a serious environment).
I'm taking the matter further.
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smbpasswd still runs, and seems to create a password file. I leave out the lines in smb.conf that tell it to ask for a password, but I assume they can still be activated using smbpasswd.
