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Make Samba share visible to Windows

Problem: Samba shares do not appear in Windows File/Network Explorer.

Cause: Because of 2017 ransomware, Windows stopped supporting the SMB1 protocol - the primary way Samba hosts are discovered on the network. Samba developers are not going fix it.

If, like me, you've found your Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) file server suddenly invisible, solutions follow.

Mainstream Linux distributions like Ubuntu support other forms of network discovery, so this might not be a problem for you.

Complicating matters is that many windows programs like VLC also support other network discovery methods, so your samba shares may be visible there, but not in Explorer.

Workaround

You can still manually map to your file server in Windows Explorer by typing in the top bar:

\\<servername>

But this is cumbersome.

Solution

WSDD is a Python based fix for many distributions. It's lightweight and fairly easy to install, but the install notes are confusing, and this simplified install doesn't work.

You're going to have to install a package from an unofficial source.

In a terminal:

Check your distro

lsb_release -cs

This will give your distribution or 'distro' name, e.g. 'stretch'.

Edit the sources list

sudo pico /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list

Add the line:

deb https://pkg.ltec.ch/public/ distro main

replacing 'distro' with your distribution name.

Add key

This part is more involved than the docs would have you think because some dependencies are not installed in Raspbian by default.

sudo apt install dirmngr
sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys https://pkg.ltec.ch/public/conf/ltec-ag.gpg.key

Install wsdd

sudo apt update
sudo apt install wsdd

Although the docs say Python 3.6+ is needed, it seems that the executable works fine. Just keep this in mind if something goes wrong.

Start wsdd

The installation will urge you to edit /etc/wsdd.conf but this is optional.

You'll notice that a systemd service has been added as part of the installation. This means it will start with the next boot. If you can't wait that long:

systemctl start wsdd.service

Check Windows File/Network Manager and see your Raspberry Pi return!

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Location: Koganei, Tokyo, Japan

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