[SOLVED]can't access ReadyNAS shares generally (not protocol-specific)

deanjlee · 2017-10-05 02:01:00

I have just setup my first Arch system in earnest with plasma, and it seems to work fine except for one elusive problem. To clarify the problem I must briefly explain how I narrowed it down.

I first tried mounting my Netgear ReadyNAS share in fstab using nfs. I could not access the result and dolphin informed me that mounting required root privaleges. After going through relevent Arch wiki articles and ruling out the main solutions, I tried using smb instead. This was revealing, because it led to the same problem. At this point I figured the problem was fstab not being authorized for some reason. But after inserting enough options to resolve this I got a different message saying the drive/share didn't exist. I then decided to check if I could access the share at all. Went to dolphin>places>network>samba and nothing appeared. I then rebooted into my parallel debian/plasma installation on the same harddrive and confirmed that I *can* access it with dolphin.

So this is not a mounting problem, it's about finding the NAS in the first place. Furthermore it does not appear to be specific to Samba. There seems to be an issue with a more general/fundamental component, something between network access, which otherwise works fine, and the file-share protocols. The only information I can think to give off the bat is that I'm using NetworkManager and my ufw is disabled. Further info will be provided as directed. Could it be a bug?

Any ideas or leads appreciated.
Cheers.

Last edited by deanjlee (2017-10-13 03:36:35)

deanjlee · 2017-10-07 10:50:57

Turns out I was wrong. I *can* mount my NAS through Samba, and the fact that my browser can't locate it prior to mounting is an entirely coincidental fluke that threw me off-scent. The problem is effectively over for me, although I won't mark this as solved because the browser problem is still a potential issue and from that perspective setting up a mount in fstab is merely a workaround.

Slithery · 2017-10-07 11:20:13

Search the forums for samba issues.

There are several recent posts regarding problems with shares that still use the old v1 protocol.

deanjlee · 2017-10-13 03:33:32

Turns out the problem wasn't over for me after all. Although I could mount manually, I *did* have a problem mounting with fstab and there *was* a general i.e. protocol-nonspecific factor. I have resolved this, and it is close enough to my original question to mark this as solved. For the sake of fstab two considerations are crucial:

1. I am using a wireless connection. See https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=165700

2. My specific goal is to mount the drive on startup. Because I work on my NAS directly, I like to mount it straight onto my desktop (using plasma's folder view; I presume mounting to the desktop folder itself is the way to go in other environments). Thus, mount-on-access setups like autofs are not relevant because I rely on the drive being mounted *in order to* access them. Anybody with a mounting issue should keep this distinction in mind to avoid confusion.

So the culprit was network manager. After running dmesg to view the system startup messages, I discovered that the smb mount was failing because the system was trying to mount it *before* activating the wireless card. A helpful comment in the thread linked above suggested switching to netctl. I wanted to see this for myself so I switched and it did resolve the specific problem: the wireless and mount setups were now happenning in the right order.

But it still wasn't over. The mount was still failing as if the order was irrelevant. There was an error message about the version which I removed by specifying vers=2.1. But the main fail message remained: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -101. So the wireless/mount order problem was just one of several layers of complication getting in the way. This whole thing has been a mind-boggling comedy of errors, and a large proportion of them seem specific to smb.

Since smb was such a mess and I had removed the network manager obstacle, I gave nfs another shot. It worked. Note that with ReadyNAS I had to disregard the Arch-wiki's instruction and use the ip address (in accordance with the NAS' documentation and because the hostname did not resolve). Required options were 'auto' and 'x-systemd.automount'. Because I had not setup nfs properly the first time, I wondered if network manager was really the problem. So I switched back and confirmed that under network manager my setup did not work. And this time, with nfs, it does not seem to be related to the timing of the wireless init. In fact, dmesg did not reveal an error message for nfs at all.

In conclusion, there is something about network manager which has failed to serve my network mounting needs, whereas netctl has proven adequate. However, this could easily have not been the case. There are many mistakes one can make that could have the same effect with either protocol, and both nfs and smb leave many avenues of error e.g. both have multiple versions that may need to be specified! However, if you have the choice I would focus on getting nfs to work because it seems to be a little more simple and stable. Feel free to challenge or affirm this, or otherwise provide comments to shed further light on these issues. But I hope that somebody in a similar situation will find this post helpful. Cheers.

PS, none of this has had any bearing on why my file manager dolphin is not finding the samba shares. I'm going to take a wild guess that it's because my smb.conf file is misplaced or missing. Like I said, a comedy of errors.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-10-05 02:01:00

[SOLVED]can't access ReadyNAS shares generally (not protocol-specific)

#2 2017-10-07 10:50:57

Re: [SOLVED]can't access ReadyNAS shares generally (not protocol-specific)

#3 2017-10-07 11:20:13

Re: [SOLVED]can't access ReadyNAS shares generally (not protocol-specific)

#4 2017-10-13 03:33:32

Re: [SOLVED]can't access ReadyNAS shares generally (not protocol-specific)

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