Hi keenerb

I have a vague recollection you cannot do \\ip.add.re.ss on 95 (or 9x), only the NT line. You have to use the name. So have working DNS and tick the box in 95's TCPIP settings for use DNS to resolve things, or figure out, er, wins or something?

Hosts file entries might be the easiest. And in fact, the half-arsed 95 way is the best way 😀

HTH
pm.exe

You installed the Active Directory Client (dsclient)? This is needed on Windows 95/98.

Make sure that NetBIOS is enabled on the machine that is accessing the machine that is hosting the share.

Any pointers on where to find the dsclient installer? Every link I've found so far is 10 years old and dead... It says its' on the Windows 2000 CD install but I don't see it.

Try changing that min protocol to CORE and see what happens

keenerb wrote on 2023-04-30, 22:38:

Any pointers on where to find the dsclient installer? Every link I've found so far is 10 years old and dead... It says its' on the Windows 2000 CD install but I don't see it.

Was DS Client for Win9x freely available for download back in the day? If so, I can enclose it here. I use this file frequently on my Win9x installations.

After I went from my Windows XP setup to Ubuntu in 2020, I decided to stop network sharing my vintage machine folders. Instead, I setup a shared folder on my router that Linux and all old Windows computers can access without a password. Thus, to send a file from my Linux machine to the vintage machine, I copy the file to the router, then go to the vintage machine and locate the file on the router's drive. It is an extra step, but I'm not bothered too much by this.

From my past experience sharing files with vintage systems without the middleman, it worked best if my Linux system used the same username and password as the Windows systems. However, this may insecurely store your Linux password on the old systems for hackers. Another issue I ran into was the 8-character password name limitation on Win3.1 with regard to shared folders. Thus, the middleman approach with the router seemed like a natural workaround. Also, I wasn't sure why typing in a different user/name password to access another computer, when that computer has a different username/pass, doesn't always work out well - even if that other user is in the user manager database on the other system as well. This is why I used to keep same user/pass on all my machines, past and current.

Make sure both smbd and nmbd are running, otherwise \\name does not work.

Attached is the dsclient. Also run the reg file after installing it. Last thing to note is to use the same name/password for Windows 9x as needed for the Samba share.

Thanks. I didn't run the reg file, set up a hosts file, installed dsclient, and it seems to be working just fine now. Thanks for the help everyone!

Yoghoo wrote on 2023-04-30, 21:59:

You installed the Active Directory Client (dsclient)? This is needed on Windows 95/98.

I’m not sure what dsclient is, but I have connected many 95/98 and 3.11 clients to my smbv1 samba share without ever needing it.

It'll allow you to use NTLMv2, if you are allowing less than that on your SMB share then you don't need it.

keenerb wrote on 2023-04-30, 19:32:

I want to map a drive letter from my Windows 95 machine to a Debian share, so that all of my retro machines have the same shared […]
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I want to map a drive letter from my Windows 95 machine to a Debian share, so that all of my retro machines have the same shared E: drive.

SMB on the Debian server has:
ntlm auth = yes
server min protocol = NT1

under the [global] section.

I have network connectivity, and I can access the share from other modern windows machines, but UNC access fails and net view fails, the former with Cannot find the file ir item \\192.168.2.1.100 make sure path and filename are correct", latter with Error 53: The computer name specified in the network path cannot be located.

The windows 95 machine does have tcp/ip and client for microsoft networks installed. Do I need to bind msnet client to the NIC? That seems vaguely familiar...

My smb.conf settings to let Win98 in:

lanman auth = yes
ntlm auth = yes
client lanman auth = yes
client plaintext auth = yes

LM authentication is needed for [stock] Win9x. You also need NTLMv1 enabled for LM authentication to work IIRC, hence ntlm auth = yes. By default only NTLMv2 is allowed in current versions of Samba.

Guess it goes without saying that it would be a very bad idea to expose a server with those settings to the Internet by the way 😀

Curious if anyone has reliably let Windows 3.1 into Samba? I've gotten it to work intermittently, depending on which machine I'm using to connect with, but usually it throws an error or hangs the system.

I'm not sure what version of Samba is being used on my Netgear R7000 Nighthawk router for its NAS, but I've never had an issue with Win3.11 accessing it.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2023-05-04, 06:04:

Curious if anyone has reliably let Windows 3.1 into Samba? I've gotten it to work intermittently, depending on which machine I'm using to connect with, but usually it throws an error or hangs the system.

Running Win3.11 on my 486. Other than it of course can't handle long file names on the shares, it works perfectly with the aforementioned Samba server. Using the 16 bit version of Total Commander to access the shares, if that matters somehow.