19 March 2019

Samba shares not showing up on Windows 10

I had an issue where my samba shares and printers stopped showing up on my Windows 10 machines. After doing some research, it seems to be due to Windows 10 disabling SMBv1 due to security concerns.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4034314/smbv1-is-not-installed-by-default-in-windows

Now, I could just re-enable this, but I decided that wasn't the best idea due to the security concerns. However, if you want to here is the Microsoft support article about how to do it.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2696547/how-to-detect-enable-and-disable-smbv1-smbv2-and-smbv3-in-windows-and

This forum thread (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2409183) pointed me to a python package on github that enabled me to have my linux box show up on my Windows 10 machines. https://github.com/christgau/wsdd

Here are the steps that I used to install it on Ubuntu 14.04 that uses upstart:

  • git clone https://github.com/christgau/wsdd.git
  • cd wsdd
  • sudo cp src/wsdd.py /usr/local/bin/wsdd
  • sudo vi /etc/init/wsdd.conf
  • sudo initctl start wsdd

Check that it is running as an unprivileged user:

  • sudo initctl status wsdd
  • ps aux | grep wsdd

Contents of wsdd.conf:
# Windows Discovery

description  "WSDD Server"

start on runlevel [2345]
stop on starting rc RUNLEVEL=[016]

respawn
respawn limit 2 5

kill timeout 300

exec start-stop-daemon --start --chuid nobody --exec /usr/local/bin/wsdd