Ubuntu 10.04 and autologin: Samba shares stop working
#1
Hi,

I have looked though quite a number of posts here and people do have problems with accessing samba shares etc, but I have not found one that really fits the issue I am seeing:

I just had to do an upgrade to 10.04 (a clean install). I have installed a full desktop with Gnome. I have installed xbmc as described here:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...Step_Guide

All my movies/music exists on remote samba shares on ubuntu 9.10 servers.

Sympthoms:

If I run xbmc from within gnome (an icon on the desktop) it starts up fine. I can add sources and I can access those sources at once and/or after a reboot. This works fine if I choose to do authenticate or do an automatic login on system startup without entering a password to gdm.

If I add xmbc to the list applications that shall be run automatically when Gnome starts then I can not access nor add shares if I choose to login to Gnome without entering a password. If I choose to enter a password to gdm all works fine.

If I run xbmc directly from gdm after entering a password to gdm all works fine. I can add and access shares, but by default I get no sound. That is fixed by adding /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 to /etc/rc.local though. Navigation sounds are gone, but that is not really an issue for me.

Now, the last option and the one I really want to use since a keyboard should be in front of a desktop PC and not in front of the TV: If I run xbmc directly from gdm without entering a password I can not add nor access smb shares. No matter what I have tried to do.

It is very seldom I am the first to discover a problem, so is there someone else that have seen this and knows about a fix or workaround for the last case? Btw, I can switch to a terminal and, as root, mount the smb share then.
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#2
It sounds like a permission problem.
Check your samba log, it might give you some clue.
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#3
samba changed a little between karmic and lucid - and your username to the samba group, that did it for me
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#4
I also thought it was a permission issue, but it might be more than that.

In 10.04, I modified the configuration of gdm so that it would allow root to auto login. It would then login to XBMC and then, the first time I tried this, it worked well. I could access and add shares through SMB. But, and there is a big BUT, it did not work on the second attempt (that is, after another reboot) and further on so unfortunately this might not be a privilege issue, but rather a timing issue of some sort. Or maybe both?

Another thing I discovered was that I could not get sound working properly when auto login as a regular user. I "fixed" that but setting the setuid flag on the xbmc binary (chmod a+s <file>). There must be a better fix for that though.

Anyway, I upgraded to 10.04 because my old OS disk started to behave. I had to do replace it and I knew Spotify's new native linux client works well on 10.04, but not on 9.10. Well, this machine's main purpose is XBMC, so I downgraded to 9.10 again. (Spotify will have to use wine a bit more on this setup).

hmm, I did not try to add my user name to the samba group (stupid me). The issue for the root user above may indicate that this is not a full fix though, but I guess I have a spare drive around where I could do some tests. I am not overwriting the current setup Smile
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Ubuntu 10.04 and autologin: Samba shares stop working0