XigmaNAS

I have been using FreeNAS and new NAS4Free for over 4 years and have recently decided to build a new 4Tb server running on a lower power Atom motherboard which works a treat. I'm a Linux user and a Windows users, I have being using the former since 2005 and the latter since 1991 I also work in IT technical support.

I have spent four hours trying to figure out why I can not access Samba shares from a Windows 8 PC (I have two and both behave in the same way). I have no problem accessing the shares using Linux (Ubuntu) PCs of which I have several. I'm experienced in using Samba in Linux (I run 3 Mythbuntu PVRs) and use Samba to share content and on my old FreeNAS server I have not has any problems accessing shares from Windows 8.

So after wasting 4 hours looking at the smb.conf files on my linux PCs and on NAS4Free I rechecked the config settings in the NAS4Free and FreeNAS Web GUI for the shares. the only difference is that the FreeNAS server has Anonymous authentication set rather than Local or Domain. NAS4Free defaults to Local and uses SM2 as the Max protocol (this option does not exist in FreeNAS 7). Anonymous does not work with SM2. Changing this to NT1 (the only other option) allows you to use Anonymous. Why didn't I do this in the beginning?

Well:

1. I tend to keep to the default settings as generally they are the most universal
2. There is a note under Max Protocol which says "SMB2 is for recent OS like Windows 7 and Vista. NT1 is for legacy OS like XP."

Now I'm sure there is a benefit in using SMB2, however if the protocol prevents me from accessing shares, asking for a username and password which fails to authenticate with the N4F server even when I prefix the username with the servers IP address/ server name then this is no benefit at all. Unfortunately the documentation on the website does not clearly explain how to get windows clients to authenticate using SMB2 and telling users to read a whole set of technical documents is no answer to what should be a straightforward solution.

Is there some proper documentation on how to setup Samba shares so that they work for Windows clients as well as Linux using SMB2? Most people use Windows clients and this needs to be properly addressed by the N4F community if you want N4F to be a truly universal NAS solution. I've yet to test this on my Apple Mac, hopefully it will behave like a Linux client

Whilst this is a bit of a rant I'm willing to help write the documentation if someone can point me in the right direction. See my Linux blog http://mylinuxramblings.wordpress.com/ as an example.

use nt1 and anonymous
be sure [win7] network exploration is on
be sure client is in the same work group as n4f

re boot everything

be wary of any IP conflicts

I started tinkering with Nas4Free yesterday after trying FreeNAS on a test unit I built. Documentation on N4F is definitely more sparse it seems. Got it working but am now struggling with access to the unit from my network. The only way I can get to the NAS is with the (N4F server name\user) for the nas. I'm an IT consultant who gets around windows pretty well but just tinker with Linux.

Has any progress been made or is there additional documentation available here? I would like to have the NAS available to users on my Server 2012 Essentials network. I have Server Essentials 2012 running as a VM with a host of Server 2012. Eventually, I'm thinking of putting backups for the server and client machines on the N4F box.

I filled in the credentials for the AD and they seemed to take -- but no joy when using any of the network credentials to access the NAS.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Have a Great Day,
Rusty