CIFS troubles

[robr]

I'm really at a loss here, I spent this weekend playing with Alfresco and I can't even get the simplest of things to work… namely CIFS.  I installed this on a Windows machine.  I created a browse space via the web client, now I want that browse space to appear as a CIFS share… I've read lots of docs, I've searched this forum, I've watched webinars, I've poked around with the two file-server.xxxx files.  It looks like it should be enabled by default….  I'm just not getting what I need to do to turn it on and be able to share that browse space out.

It's like I'm getting TOO MUCH info, some of it depricated, and it's all confusing me.  Being a windows guy, all these config files are pretty overwhelming, but I've played with JBoss applications before and do have some experience with them, so it's not rocket science.  Is there a nice simple UP TO DATE doc that basically says 'DO THIS' to turn it on without trying to document every option available?  Thanks!

[richard_evans]

Hello there. I have been tearing my hair out with what appears to be an identical problem with Alfresco 3.1 on Vista SP2 (workgrouped, not in a domain).
I can log on fine to Alfresco through the web interface using admin/admin, but I can't add a network location through cifs.

None of your patient suggestions work for me.

If I try to connect to \\servernameA with admin/admin the password is not recognised and I am reprompted for the password for <servername>\admin (note prefix).
If I try from the commandline get a login failure too…

C:\Users\evansr>net use  \\richardslappiea admin /user:admin
System error 1326 has occurred.
Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.
‍‍‍‍‍

If I give misname the resource I am connecting to I get a completely different error so it really seems to come down to a problem with the authentication.

C:\Users\evansr>net use  \\richardslappieb admin /user:admin
System error 53 has occurred.
The network path was not found.
‍‍‍‍‍

Very interested in getting through this as Alfresco is looking superb and I want to try out the surf sample which starts off with an installation by cifs copy!
I hope you can help me get to the bottom of this!
Rich

[robr]

Here's what happens when I try to connect through explorer by just entering \\alfrescoa

Note Username is greyed out and I cant change it.  I've tried this from a couple of different computers and it's always pre-populated with ALFRESCO\guest and greyed out.  I've tried both from XP computers that are members of a domain and also an XP computer that was just a workgroup member.

[img]http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/7585/explorer.jpg[/img]

[deaconboogie]

This is an interesting thread…

I still don't know why the share is \\serverA… I think I get it, kind of, but I am not 100% sure what I need to do to get this name to resolve to an IP address without putting in a DNS entry.

I've tried \\serverA but it never works.

[robr]

I understand the serverA context, they had to create a 'virtual' netbios name appearance as you will and tie it to alfresco's user security model for starters. 
They needed to create something that wouldn't conflict with Windows own networking and file sharing as well

so \\server\sharename /user:joe references your windows machine named server, with a windows share name of sharename, and using windows user joe to authenticate
\\servera\sharename /user:joe references the virtual alfresco server, with a shared alfresco site name of sharename, and authenticate against the alfresco user joe

At least that's my understanding of why based on what I know about how Windows networking and security works.  Now we just need to get it to work!  I'll join this machine to a domain if that's the trick, I really don't care what I have to do, I just want to actually start playing with this and showing it to people.

And I can't actually use the event log to help troubleshoot security issues as these aren't truly windows security issues (I dont think) nor does the virtual server authentication appear to be dumping any info to the event log.

[robr]

This is an interesting thread…

I still don't know why the share is \\serverA… I think I get it, kind of, but I am not 100% sure what I need to do to get this name to resolve to an IP address without putting in a DNS entry.

I've tried \\serverA but it never works.

FWIW, I had the same issue as you with both Win2K8 and Vista.  Once I moved the install to XP, \\serverA at least started to resolve.  I couldn't even resolve it from the machine it was installed on from the other two OS.

[robr]

Well, I've tried adding it to the domain, no luck.
Then I edited the alfresco-global.properties file and added alfresco.authentication.authenticateCIFS=true - still no luck (though now the username box isn't greyed out, but still prepopulates anything I enter with the machine name… I enter admin, it comes back with alfresco\admin).
I removed it from the domain and tried with that properties edit, no luck.

[robr]

Is CIFS easier to get running on linux?  Sort of a ridiculous question, but I can't spend any more time on this .

[deaconboogie]

I agree, this is really ridiculous… NetBIOS? Really? This is 2009…

[robr]

I agree, this is really ridiculous… NetBIOS? Really? This is 2009…

I have no issue with how they implemented what they did, in fact it's quite ingenious, I just don't like the fact it's so difficult for many of us to get working.  I installed a CentOS instance on my Hyper-V server last night, I'll give Alfresco a shot on that today and see how it goes.  I reaaaaally want to try this and think it would be extremely useful for us.  It does most of what we want, the only thing that it doesn't appear to do (and I don't know anything that does) is maintain relationships between documents and include updating multiple documents in the workflow if something changes in the parent.  Say I had a price list that existed as standalone Word doc, and updated that, but that price list also existed in HTML on a webpage and as a single page within a multi page PDF catalog….. Update the price list, the rest are updated as well.  I was searching for a solution to that, not expecting to find one at a reasonable cost when I came across Alfresco and thought hmmm…. at least this would solve a bunch of problems.  Maybe you have to write an external script to do the rest that gets called as an action when you update a parent doc…..  in any case, that's all a different subject, I just tend to talk too much

[robr]

Believe it or not, I have CIFS working on CentOS… I have other issues (cant connect to alfresco explorer), and several install hurdles I had to leap over, but once I was actually able to get alfresco share started, I was able to connect to \\servernameA from a windows PC using admin/admin out of the box (note it's running under root, not advised but I've seen there are issues when not running it under root because of the inability to bind to privileged ports).

Hmmm… I'm having various issues dragging files onto the check in/out link …. I need to read up more before I understand if I'm doing something wrong……