Using Samba in your File Manager

Accessing SMB Shares from the File Manager

Dolphin is capable of mounting smb file shares without needing any additional packages. All other file managers require installing the package gvfs-smb. This is present by default in most Manjaro editions but if you need to install it you can so with:

pamac install gvfs-smb

Sharing Files from the File Manager

The following will guide you through setting up user sharing with Samba so that you can use your file manager to share folders.

Installation

Depending on which file manager you use there are different packages to install. Please reference the appropriate section for your file manager.

The manjaro-settings-samba package will install a basic config and enable the file sharing services. The whole process is nicely automated.

Nemo - Cinnamon

pamac install nemo-share manjaro-settings-samba

Nautilus - Gnome/Budgie

pamac install nautilus-share manjaro-settings-samba

Caja - MATE

pamac install caja-share manjaro-settings-samba

Thunar - XFCE

pamac install thunar-shares-plugin-gtk3

Dolphin - KDE/plasma

pamac install samba kdenetwork-filesharing manjaro-settings-samba

Finishing Up

Once you have installed the required packages for your file manager you should reboot to start the services and let the group changes take effect.

Troubleshooting

Protocol version

Since samba 4.11.0 released on 2019-09-17, the very old Windows NT protocol is disabled by default because of serious security issues, so if you connect to:

• a supported Windows version
• a supported Linux Samba server
• a supported NAS appliance

Please upgrade these to the latest version and disable the NT1 protocol on these servers if not done automatically.

If you connect to:

• an unsupported Windows version
• an unsupported NAS

Please turn off file sharing towards the Internet and know that malicious users on your LAN (unless isolated in a guest network) will be able to access all local NT1 shares with full control.

User Accounts

If you are getting permission denied when connecting to a new share, one common cause of this is that samba does not have access to Linux user passwords by default. To remedy this, create a samba password for your user account:

sudo smbpasswd -a theusername

This will create a password for the user.

User Doesn't have Rights to Create Shares

If you get an error that you don't have rights to create shares ensure that you user account has been added to the group sambashare. After modifying groups it is required to logout for the changes to take effect.

Firewall

If you are getting "connection denied" errors make sure you have allowed access through your firewall. See the firewall wiki article for more details.

See Also

• The Samba Project
• The Arch Wiki Samba Page