Tag Archives: fix

How to correctly configure and use the Windows Network on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

At the beginning it appeared as a no-solved mystery because in all the many posts I read, there were no effective solutions. On my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS I was no able to use the external hard disk I had connected to the LAN and every time I tried to mount it I only received this message: Unable to mount location – Failed to retrieve share list from server

In few words it was not possible to use the Windows Network and all the people with the same problem (which is specific for the Ubuntu 10.04) suggested to reconfigure Samba but all the configuration and scripts I tried were no effective to let me use the external hard disk.

At the end I found someone who talked about a possible firewall misconfiguration and I tried in many ways to bypass the situation using ufw commands and opening ports and services over the LAN:

$ sudo ufw status
[sudo] password for *****:
Status: active

To                                      Action            From
—                        ——      —-
135,139,445/tcp           ALLOW       Anywhere (log)
137,138/udp                  ALLOW       Anywhere (log)
Samba                     ALLOW       Anywhere
192.168.0.3 Samba     ALLOW       10.0.0.0/8
10.0.0.0/8                    ALLOW       192.168.0.3 Samba

Unfortunately, every new permission I granted to Samba on my Firewall was not a real solution but when I tried to stop the Firewall (System –> Administration –> Firewall Configuration) using the default firewall manager, Ubuntu was able to find and work on the external hard disk.

For this reason I made some tests and found this solution:

1 – enter your router settings and find the list of the attached device

2 – find the name and the MAC address of the LAN device you want to connect to your PC

3 – find the menu for the Lan Setup and add an Address Reservation for the above device. Now you are sure that the router will always assign the same address to the device

4 – back to Ubuntu, install and launch Firestarter (for some incomprehensible reasons the default firewall manager is not able to create rules for Samba services and ports)

5 – on Firestarter, go to Preferences —> Policy Editor and click on “Apply policy changes immediately”

6 – try to connect again to Windows Network, obviously (sic) it will not work but then go to Firestarter —> Events and you will notice that the last line is the “missing” external disk which has an “unknown” service

7 – right-click the mouse on this line and “Allow connections from source”. Now the external hard disk is visible from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and it is possible to work on it!

8 – to be sure that your LAN device will be rightly connected to Ubuntu 10.04 every time you boot up it: go to System –> Preferences –> Startup Applications

9 – add a new Firestarter rule typing the following command: sudo firestarter

That’s all! I hope you can find this post useful!

Video – Fix .ICEauthority by danny6465

Fix .ICEauthority problem at Linux boot up

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After upgrading my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS I had an error window at every boot up session. The message advised me about:

Could not update ICEauthority file /home/username/.ICEauthority

ICEauthority is the Inter-Client Exchange (ICE) Protocol that allows authentication, negotiation, setting up and taking down connections between programs. In few words, if two programs have the same cookies, they will talk and exchange data through ICEauthority.

To fix this matter open the Terminal and type:

ls -al

Then you find a line similar to this:

-rw——- 1 root root 35226 2011-10-06 00:24 .ICEauthority

This means that your profile (username on a Linux OS) is not allowed to manage ICEauthority and you have to gain full permission to solve the boot up problem:

sudo chown username:username ~/.ICEauthority

Where username is your user profile on Linux.

Then type:

sudo chmod u+rw ~/.ICEauthority

To check if you succeeded, type again:

ls -al

and this time you will find a line like this:

-rw——- 1 username username 35226 2011-10-06 00:24 .ICEauthority

That’s all!

How to repair a bad upgrade on Ubuntu!

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This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we posted some tips about repairing a bad Linux upgrade. In fact, it is rare but sometimes, unfortunately, it happens. I mean one or more error during an upgrade installation on Ubuntu. In my case the problem was caused by a blackout and a battery which did not worked properly. When I restarted the PC it worked only in text mode and it asked me the login and the password to enter into the Ubuntu root mode. Obviously, as usual, I typed the requested data and then, after reading how to solve similar problems on internet, I decided to go forward with sudo apt-get update. At this point Ubuntu advised me that something had been wrong during the last update and suggested to try with sudo dpkg –configure -a. I followed the suggestions and I concluded the “repair session” with sudo apt-get upgrade –fix-broken. Fifteen minutes later and after rebooting all the “bad upgrade” problems were solved. Recommended!