Accessing CIFS share from remote machines

[kilucas]

I have a vanilla installation of community edition 3 (apart from using a non-standard ftp port) on a WinXP pro box. All modes of file access (http, webdav, ftp) that I've tried work fine except for CIFS.

I can access the alfresco and AVM shares from Windows Explorer on the server itself via \\<servername>A. But this server name isn't seen by any other PCs, some of which are on the same subnet and others are not but they can reach the server and its normal Windows shares at \\<servername> by using LMHOSTS entries.

I can telnet into ports 139 and 445 from both types of remote machine.

Netstat - b - n tells me that both ports are occupied by PID 4 which is System. I got the impression from some posts that the process should be something to do with Alfresco instead but I'm not clear how I'd change that.

As I understand it I don't need to worry about privilged ports because I'm on Windows. So I've not mapped ports 137, 138, 139 or 445 anywhere else and haven't mapped anything else to them.

If I use windows explorer to access \\<IP address of servername> I see the shares associated with \\<servername> and not \\<servername>A.

Can anyone spot what I need to do to obtain windows CIFS access to the Alfresco server please, remembering that it's not dedicated to Alfresco and hence I must be careful not to change anything that would disturb normal Windows operation including Windows access to \\<servername> shares?

And can I ask what I will need to do in an LMHOSTS file to reach \\<servernameA> please because I presume that <servername>A effectively runs on the same IP address as <servername> and I didn't think I could have two entries in LMHOSTS for a single IP address.

Many thanks for any clues you might have.

Kevin

[mcraven]

I am running Windows Server 2003 R2 and am seeing exactly the same thing. I can access the repository using Windows Explorer from the server but not from any other windows machine. When I try I get the following message:

Windows cannot find '\\servernameA\Alfresco'. Check the spelling and try again, or try searching for the item by clicking the Start button and then clicking Search.

If I do search the network I can find "servername", but not "servernameA". Does anyone know how to correct this issue on Windows servers?

Regards,
Mark C.

[daedalus]

Hi Mark,

Did you find a fix to your problem. I have exactly the same issue, and it seems we're not alone.

I'm interested to hear if this problem exists in Enterprise, as I would have looked to upgrade but obviously not if this function doesn't work for us.

I can get CIFS to work on the installed machine and assign a drive letter, it works fine. But no matter what I can't access it remotely.

I'm interested to hear if you or anybody else has progressed at all with this issue.

Many thanks.

[kilucas]

Sorry, I never got to the bottom of this. A bug in Share made it unusable for the time being. Problems with the server box then meant I had to rebuild it and I'm parceling out my apps across servers differently now with Alfresco going to a Linux box using Alfresco v3.3. I'll be interested to see if the CIFS or Share problems recur in the new environment. But meanwhile I'm afraid that I'm insightless.
Good luck
Kevin

[daedalus]

Thats a shame, i'm verging on giving up …which is unlike me!

I found this patch but i'm not sure if its the fix we're looking for as it's a bit over my head to be honest, i'm a tech author not a developer unfortunately.

https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALF-229

If you think this may be the answer can you please let me know. I don't even know where i would install the patch!!

Jake

[mcraven]

I am running Alfresco Community Edition V3.3 under Windows Server 2003 R2. Here is what I did:

1) Create file-server-custom.xml in C:\Alfresco\tomcat\shared\classes\alfresco\extension with the following content (substitute your own {localname}):

<alfresco-config area="file-servers">

<!– To override the default Alfresco filesystem use replace="true", to –>
<!– add additional filesystems remove the replace="true" attribute –>

<config evaluator="string-compare" condition="Filesystems" replace="true">
<filesystems>

<filesystem name="Alfresco">
<store>workspace://SpacesStore</store>
<rootPath>/app:company_home</rootPath>
<disableChangeNotification/> 
<!– Add a URL file to each folder that links back to the web client –>
<urlFile>
<filename>__Alfresco.url</filename>
<webpath>http://${localname}A:8080/alfresco/</webpath>
</urlFile>

<!– Mark locked files as offline –>
<offlineFiles/>

<!– Desktop actions –>

<desktopActions>
<global>
<path>alfresco/desktop/Alfresco.exe</path>
<webpath>http://${localname}A:8080/alfresco/</webpath>
</global>
<action>
<class>org.alfresco.filesys.smb.server.repo.desk.CheckInOutDesktopAction</class>
<name>CheckInOut</name>
<filename>__CheckInOut.exe</filename>
</action>
<action>
<class>org.alfresco.filesys.smb.server.repo.desk.JavaScriptDesktopAction</class>
<name>JavaScriptURL</name>
<filename>__ShowDetails.exe</filename>
<script>alfresco/desktop/showDetails.js</script>
<attributes>anyFiles</attributes>
<preprocess>copyToTarget</preprocess>
</action>

</desktopActions>

<!–
<accessControl default="Write">
<user name="admin" access="Write"/>
<address subnet="90.1.0.0" mask="255.255.0.0" access="Write"/>
</accessControl>
–>
</filesystem>

<!– AVM virtualization view of all stores/versions for WCM –>
<avmfilesystem name="AVM">
<virtualView/>
</avmfilesystem>

</filesystems>
</config>

</alfresco-config>
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

2) Copied win32netbios.dll from C:\Alfresco\bin to C:\Windows\System32

3) Restarted Alfresco

After doing this I could access the Alfresco repository from other Windows machines using Windows Explorer.

Regards,
Mark C.

[savah]

Good morning all.


We've come across some problems with Alfresco 2.1 on a windows 2003 machine. Alfresco runs at this server which is a part of our corporate domain. While the CIFS share  (servername_a) works well for people accessing it from computers which belong to this domain, we cannot access it from computers which are not a part of this domain. Any ideas of how this can be solved?

[agey]

Hi savah,

I have the same problem. Did you get fix it?