Ubuntu – Unable to mount smb share. “Please select another viewer and try again”

12.04gvfsnautilussmb

This don't think this is the typical, "I can't mount a windows share" post.

I am using stock Ubuntu 12.04. I am pretty sure this is a Nautilus issue, but I have reached a dead end. I have one share that I can't mount using smb://server/share via nautilus. I get the following error.

Error: Failed to mount Windows share
Please select another viewer and try again

I can mount this share from other machines(non-ubuntu) using the same credentials so I know I have perms on the destination share. I can mount other shares on other servers from my Ubuntu box so I am pretty sure I have all the smb packages I need on my Ubuntu box. To make thing more interesting, if I use smbclient from the command line, I mount this share with no problems from my Ubuntu box.

So here's what we know:

  1. destination share perms are ok (no problem accessing from other machines)
  2. smb is setup correctly on Ubuntu box (access other windows shares no problem)
  3. I only get the error when using nautilus
  4. smbclient in terminal works, no problem

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Googling turned up simple mount/perms issues, and I don't think that is what is going on here.

Let me know if you need more information.

Hugh

Update 1:

gvfs-mount smb://host/share failed with the following error:

Error mounting location: Failed to mount Windows share

Update 2:

John –

  • I tried #1 and got the same error as above.
  • #2 is not an option. This is a production share and if I changed the name of the share it would break things for many users.
  • I tried #3 and got the same select another viewer and try again error.

Update 3:

I installed a Debian guest VM on this box. It can connect to this share without issue. I tried both gvfs-mount from the terminal and I tried it from nautilus. They were both successful.

Here's some info on the Deb VM:

$ uname -a
Linux debian 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Sun Sep 23 10:07:46 UTC 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ dpkg -l |grep gvfs
ii  gvfs                                 1.6.4-3                           userspace 
$ dpkg -l |grep nautilus
ii  nautilus                             2.30.1-2squeeze1                  file manager and graphical shell for GNOME

I hope this helps a little

Update 4

Looking at the logs was one of the first things I checked. Nothing gets logged to syslog with the mount fails.

Update 5

  • added share name to existing share and got the same error.
  • nothing in server event logs
  • tested a different share on same server and was able to connect. makes you think it is a perms issue, except I can connect to problematic share from command line via smbclient command.
  • I am not thrilled about the downgrade option

Best Answer

I had this problem too and I'll bet yours is the same.

It only happened with some shares. I had guest ok = Yes, but the permissions only allowed the owner to list the directory contents.

For example:

[documents]
    path = /home/ghodmode/Documents
    read only = No
    guest ok = Yes

... and ...

ghodmode@server ~ % ls -dl /home/ghodmode/Documents/
drwxr--r-- 12 ghodmode ghodmode 4096 Dec 14 03:32 /home/ghodmode/Documents/

The result was exactly the error message you described. This tells me that nautilus will access shares on a server as a guest user when it can even if it has already accessed other shares as a logged in user.

The default guest user is "nobody".

The solution for me was to change the permissions. I suspect that setting guest ok = No would also work.

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