SOLVED SMB shares not showing in network browsing

[onekanoobie]

Hello, I really dont know if this is the right place to post this but I came across this post while troubleshooting my issue. I use Kodi to play videos that I have stored on my freenas server running Samba. I have Kodi on 6 rpis that are not having any issue with the sources as they have been set up for years. I upgraded Freenas to 11.1.U6 from U1 a couple days ago with no issues.

Last night I tried streaming to Kodi on my Android tablet and Phone with the exact same results. Both said the network was not available. I was however able to find the shares via ES File Explorer app, even trying to add a new source in Kodi would not work. It seemed like the Freenas share was no longer discover-able. That led me to looking at the window network shares which I normally do not use (normally I set up mapped drives which work perfectly fine). And I found out that there have been many changes to smb and apparently updates to windows to depreciate this functionality.

Again I am not sure this is the right place to post this, and I have not had a chance to try all of the things mentioned in previous posts. I have been able to get my windows PCs to show up again by turning on the "Function Discovery Resource Publication" service, and I can add a network location, but none of that explains why ES File Explorer can discover my Freenas server, but kodi cannot on my Android devices. Any thoughts?

I will try adding the additional options to the smb service on Freenas mentioned above (master browser), and i will also post in the Kodi forum.

 

[anodos]

Hello, I really don't know if this is the right place to post this but I came across this post while troubleshooting my issue. I use Kodi to play videos that I have stored on my freenas server running Samba. I have Kodi on 6 rpis that are not having any issue with the sources as they have been set up for years. I upgraded Freenas to 11.1.U6 from U1 a couple days ago with no issues.

Last night I tried streaming to Kodi on my Android tablet and Phone with the exact same results. Both said the network was not available. I was however able to find the shares via ES File Explorer app, even trying to add a new source in Kodi would not work. It seemed like the Freenas share was no longer discover-able. That led me to looking at the window network shares which I normally do not use (normally I set up mapped drives which work perfectly fine). And I found out that there have been many changes to smb and apparently updates to windows to depreciate this functionality.

Again I am not sure this is the right place to post this, and I have not had a chance to try all of the things mentioned in previous posts. I have been able to get my windows PCs to show up again by turning on the "Function Discovery Resource Publication" service, and I can add a network location, but none of that explains why ES File Explorer can discover my Freenas server, but kodi cannot on my Android devices. Any thoughts?

I will try adding the additional options to the smb service on Freenas mentioned above (master browser), and i will also post in the Kodi forum.

This is a side effect of legacy SMB protocol versions being disabled by default in 11.1-U6. Follow the steps here: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/library/freenas-11-1-u6/ and restart the samba service.

Known Impacts
SMB1 has been disabled by default for security reasons. If legacy clients are no longer able to connect, type this command in the Shell, then restart the SMB service:

sysctl freenas.services.smb.config.server_min_protocol=NT1
If that resolves the issue, you can make that setting permanent by going to System → Tunables →Add Tunable and creating a Tunable with these settings:

Variable: freenas.services.smb.config.server_min_protocol

Value: NT1

Type: Sysctl

 

[onekanoobie]

Wow! Thank you. That fixed it and you saved me probably a few hours of frustration. It must just be the Android version of Kodi since the Linux and Windows we unaffected. Again, thank you very much.

 

[zbang]

It's a bit hard to tell exactly what the original problem was and how the OP solved it, but....

While it had been working for months/years, as of some time ago none of my WIN7 boxes could browse the network at all (they all export shares) but they could connect to the shares using the \\server\share syntax. At this time, poking all of the systems w/ "nbtstat -a" tells me that the FreeNAS box was the master browser.

Simply turning off Local Master in the FreeNAS SMB config almost instantly allowed all of the clients to see both other clients' shares and the server shares.

At this point, I'm not to sure I care why, perhaps samba's browse master code isn't as good as it could be, or maybe a recent windows update changed something, but for 5-7 systems on a flat network, it's no longer worth chasing.

 

[airduster]

Hey, sorry for opening this old post.
But I try all the settings in this posting, and can't see my Freenas (11.2 U5) in the Windows Network Folder.
I run also a QNAP NAS, and I can see these in the Windows Network Folder.

 

[zoomzoom]

@airduster What version of Windows are you using, and are you on an Insider build?

• Can you access your shares by manually navigating to them or adding them as a network share/mapped drive?
  • i.e. Windows Explorer -> \\FreeNAS\ShareName

 

[airduster]

Hi, I can access all shares via \\Freenas\ShareName.
I have also some shares mounted as network drive.
I can also see other PCs in my Network in the network browser.

 

[airduster]

Okay, I found a solution

https://www.ixsystems.com/community...s-network-neighbourhood-better-than-ever.106/

 

[zoomzoom]

@airduster If you've tried all the solutions offered in this thread, I'm not sure how to troubleshoot. I personally don't use Network in Explorer, but I can offer a few roundabout solutions:

• If you type the FreeNAS hostname into Explorer, it will show all shares available (i.e. Windows Explorer -> \\FreeNAS
• You can add your FreeNAS hostname as a folder in the navigation pane of Windows Explorer by merging the following into the Registry.
  • However, due to Windows 10 disabling automatic registry backups, first merge the following into the registry, re-enabling auto registry backups, reboot, then perform the merge of the Nav Pane.
    (This ensures should anything go wrong, there's an auto backup... you can also manually backup the registry via RegEdit.exe)
    
    Code:

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    
     [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager]
     "EnablePeriodicBackup"=dword:00000001

  
  Copy/Paste the following into a text editor (not Atom) and save with a .reg extension, then merge into registry
  
  Code:

  Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}]
   @="FreeNAS"
   "System.IsPinnedToNamespaceTree"=dword:00000001
   "SortOrderIndex"=dword:00000042
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}\ShellFolder]
   "FolderValueFlags"=dword:00000028
   "Attributes"=dword:f080004d
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}]
   @="FreeNAS"
   "System.IsPinnedToNamespaceTree"=dword:00000001
   "SortOrderIndex"=dword:00000042
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}\ShellFolder]
   "FolderValueFlags"=dword:00000028
   "Attributes"=dword:f080004d
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}\DefaultIcon]
   @="C:\\Users\\UserName\\Pictures\\Icons\\FreeNAS.ico,0"
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}\Instance]
   "CLSID"="{0E5AAE11-A475-4c5b-AB00-C66DE400274E}"
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}\Instance\InitPropertyBag]
   "Attributes"=dword:00000011
   "TargetFolderPath"="\\FreeNAS"
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]
   "{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}"=dword:00000001
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}]
   @="FreeNAS"
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}\DefaultIcon]
   @="C:\\Users\\UserName\\Pictures\\Icons\\FreeNAS.ico,0"
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}\Instance]
   "CLSID"="{0E5AAE11-A475-4c5b-AB00-C66DE400274E}"
  
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{0960F090-F328-48A3-B746-276B1E3C3722}\Instance\InitPropertyBag]
   "Attributes"=dword:00000011
   "TargetFolderPath"="\\FreeNAS"

  • @="FreeNAS": Name you want to appear in the Nav Pane
  • @="C:\\Users\\UserName\\Pictures\\Icons\\FreeNAS.ico,0": Icon file to be used in the Nav Pane
  • "TargetFolderPath"="\\FreeNAS": FreeNAS hostname

 

[RiBeneke]

Please read the previous posts.
Older Windows XP etc used Netbios and Computer Browser, no longer recommended or supported in Windows.
Older FreeNAS had SMB1 SMB2 SMB3 enabled. But SMB1 has security issues and should be disabled.
These functions together allowed network shares to show up in Windows Explorer.
Now in Windows Explorer, you must go to Network and search for
\\servername\sharefoldername (use your own names, of course) and then set this as a mapped drive.

 

[TopQuark]

I ran into this problem today. It turns out the process of installing SMB by ixsystems is correct as it is. Just follow exactly as it is. What happens is, if there was an error in the initial settings and there was access problem, Windows 10 caches this old information so no matter what setting you change in FreeNAS will not have any effect even after rebooting the client Windows 10 PC.

Restarting the Workstation service is able to resolve this problem.

C:> net stop workstation /y
C: > net start workstation

The /y flag forces the service to stop and override existing connections.