[SMB] No authentication prompt when accessing share using 'user@host/folder'

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1

Hi,

I’ve just setup Bazzite (atomic fedora) with KDE and was trying to access my SMB share (using ‘smb://host.domain.foo/share1/subfolder’).
I noticed, that I can access it without any authentication, as this specific share (‘share1’) is read-only accessible to anonymous users.

But as soon as I want to edit or create a file, it fails with a ‘permission denied’.
Even when specifying a permitted user to access this location with (using ‘smb://user@host.domain.foo/share1/subfolder’), I get a permission error and no chance to authenticate as my user.

One workaround I found was to go to my server and create a share (share-foo) that only this specific user has access to, not even enabling read-only access for anonymous users.
Trying to access share-foo, dolphin prompts me to authenticate. Here I can save my credentials and THEN have write access to my original share1.

Is there another way to force authentication in dolphin?
Or am I missing something obvious here?

This feels like a bug to me but I don’t want to rule out user error on my end.
What do you think?

2

Hi! I might be off here, as it’s been years since I had a Samba share active on my local network, but - what type of system is hosting the share?

I’m thinking of cases where anonymous access might technically be marked as allowed at an individual folder level, but is prohibited at the server level: Enable insecure guest logons in SMB2 and SMB3 for Windows client and Windows Server | Microsoft Learn

3

Hi @johnandmegh,
Thank you for the link and suggestion!

The share is hosted by an UnraidOS server and it’s security level is set to ‘secure’, meaning:

The share is secured and all users, including guests, have read access. You can select which of your users have write access.
~ (Source: Unraid Docs [Links are prohibited :frowning: ])

I also just noticed that I might not have explained my issue that well, I’ll try to clear it up:

My issue is not that anonymous- / guest-access is possible (It’s intended so I can access stuff in read-only without needing to log in).
My issue is that I wasn’t able to trigger any authentication flow in Dolphin to gain write access, although I had explicitely set a user in the connection string ‘user@host.domain.foo/share1’

So my expectation is to get an authentication prompt when specifying a user in the connection string, that hasn’t been used prior (or saved in a credential store like kwallet).
Right now I need to access a share that no one except my intended user has access to, to actually trigger the authentication prompt through the samba server.

I hope that clears up any confusion of my initial question. :wink:

4

Thanks - is it accurate to list out the sequence of events like this?

Two shares on one server
Share A: Anyone can read, but only you can write
Share B: Only you can read or write

  1. Try to read A: Works
  2. Try to write to A: Denied
  3. Try to read B: Password prompt
  4. Try to write to A: Works

I don’t personally know enough about Samba beyond the very basics, but if that’s an accurate framing then hopefully others here can recognize either a configuration trick needed, or a bug :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

Yeah, your sequence is correct!
No worries, I hope anybody can enlighten me on this before I open a ticket at KDE. :wink: