SAMBA and Windows 10

Hi there

I know a load of people have Linux as a VM on a Windows 10 Host (and the other way around too).

Samba will often yield strange results with W10 if you don't set up the smb.conf file correctly to work with W10. This should also fix "timeout on server" type of problems too.

anyway these suggestions seem to work in pretty well all cases I've seen where there are problems (usually from the Windows end !!!!).

I've assumed your VM has networking enabled and is reachable on an accessible network !!!!!

1) Enable Network discovery on Windows

2) Ensure any Windows files you want to share on Linux are given shared properties in Windows

3) set any firewalls to allow SAMBA type connections (both Windows and Linux)

4) ensure the SMB.CONF file has these lines in the [global] section

max protocol = SMB3

name resolve order = bcast lmhosts host wins

Even if (as most don't) you don't use wins leave the line as indicated.

W10 networking doesn't use netbios so you often get the situation where you can't connect via hostname but only via ip address - which is fiddly and also maintaining host files every time you re-boot etc is a pain.

Note - especially if you boot a windows VM on a Linux host - windows takes around 5 mins sometimes for it to be known on the network - maybe somebody could see if there was some windows setting that speeds this up. The Linux machine is usually available to windows shortly after Windows has booted up.

Cheers
jimbo