Ubuntu Samba server not discovered by Windows 7

Question

Windows 7 cannot discover any samba servers on my local network, I can navigate to them manually with \\server.

Solved (kinda)

Answer 1

Rather than reduce the security offered by Windows, you can add this to smb.conf:

local master = yes
preferred master = yes

This will make your Samba server appear in the Windows 7 Network browser.

For added fun, you can also add

ntlm auth = no
lanman auth = no #the default is no.

but this will require you to add the

sec=ntlmv2

option to all of your authenticated Linux CIFS mounts, as it deactivates NTLMv1 auth.

Answer 2

Make sure your Hostname of the system itself is the same as the hostname in ``smb.conf. There seems to be an issue where Windows clients can not see the samba server unless this is so.

So if your system hostname is different from what you want smb to show, change either.

Answer 3

This article might help: Get Vista and Samba to work.
(Although written for Vista, it also applies to Windows 7.)

If the cause for the problem is NTLMv2 authentication, this article describes how to make Windows 7 negotiate with Samba for a common authentication protocol.

Answer 4

Solved

In the Advanced Sharing Settings (accessed through left panel in Network and Sharing Centre), Choose 'Enable file sharing for devices that use 40- or 56-bit encryption'.

Seems that samba doesn't support 128-bit encryption (or I haven't configured it to do so)