Failed to mount Windows share: Invalid argument

Question

A very similar question has been asked before by robazefa, but no one answered it. For the last month or so, my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS box has been been unable to open a couple of folders shared from external drives on a PC running Win 8.1 on a home network.

Through Files on the Unity desktop, I can browse the network, access the workgoup, access the Win 8.1 box, see and access its shares except the folders on its external drives. They appear on the list and I could access them without a problem a couple of months ago, but now I get a dialogue box with Unable to access location - failed to mount Windows share: Invalid argument message, with only the option to click OK.

These folders are readily accessible now from other Win 7 and 8 PCs on the network, but the same Invalid argument error now appears on the only other Linux box on the network which runs Mint Cinnamon.

My question is which argument is in invalid and how can I validate it?

Solution 1

I resolved this by using the IP address instead of the server name.

Solution 2

This sounds like a regression. An Ubuntu bug report and upstream bug report has already been made for it. It might be best to set yourself as "affected" and ask what information is needed. also clearly state that this is a regression. Regressions get fixed faster.

Workaround #1

You can try manually opening the share with nautilus (the file manager)

nautilus smb://ServernameOrIp

Workaround #2

You can try mounting it with smbclient. Example:

smbclient –L geekmini –U geek

Where geekmini is pc and geek is username.

Create mountpoint:

sudo mkdir /media/Video

Actually mounting the drive:

mount –t cifs –o username=geek,password=thepass //geekmini/root /media/Video

Good luck and let me know what works!

Solution 3

edit /etc/samba/smb.conf

and Disable SMBv1 and use SMBv2 works for me

like min protocol = SMB2

Solution 4

My samba share has started to produce this same error after the group the shared directory had, and was shared to, has been erroneously deleted.

It got back to work OK after the situation with the disappeared group was resolved.

One could resolve it giving the share another group in the smb.conf file, but I just recreated it on the system level.

Hope this will help.

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Comments

[Kev]

I had this start happening "suddenly" too. I wonder which of the Linux updates broke things...

[Rinzwind]

1st attempt: You get this notice when Windows system's firewalling does not allow remote file accessing.

[Rinzwind]

2nd attempt: please tell us the filesystems these are on and check if your system supports it (exFat might need installing a driver).

[Michael Bennett]

Sorry, I should have posted earlier. Nothing I tried worked when I first encountered the problem. A couple of months ago, I found a workaround by accident. Cleaning up, I unplugged all the peripherals from the PC. Reconnecting them, I inadvertently plugged the old external HDD into a USB3 port. Only later did I discover the invalid argument problem had gone away, but it no longer mattered because I had already moved all the files I wanted to other drives.

[S.A.]

and how did you obtain the IP address? ... How wuold you get it if you only know the server name?

[Cereal]

@S.A.Ping the server name.

[Eliezer Berlin]

Walk over to the windows computer, open up Command Prompt, and type in ipconfig.

[Sileria]

This is what worked for me. I had forgotten that I have created a group for samba users. Thanks!!!