Accessing unauthenticated shared folders

Accessing unauthenticated shared folders from Windows 10

There are two main errors that you can see:

  1. Unauthenticated Guest Access
  2. Invalid Protocol

See the below sections for instructions on how to resolve these errors.

Error message: “Unauthenticated Guest Access”

You may see an error such as, particularly when attempting to update IMS events in mXrap:

Tooltip content

Error checking Source file:
status: You can’t access this shared folder because your organization’s security policies block unauthenticated guest access. These policies help protect your PC from unsafe or malicious devices on the network…

or perhaps a Windows pop-up error message with some obscure error numbers like 0x80004005 or 0x80070035.

This is due to a change in Windows 10 default security settings, and there are two ways of resolving the issue:

  1. The IMS (Linux) server can be reconfigured to work with these new restrictions (requires IMS to assist, or a local IT admin with Linux experience).
  2. The security settings of the Windows client can be reduced.

 

Procedure to Adjust Linux Server Settings

  1. You can ask IMS to make this adjustment, or, ONLY do this if you are an experienced Linux admin.
  2. Use SSH to log into your site IMS server.
  3. Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf,
    ie   sudo vim /etc/samba/smb.conf
    and in the [global] section:

     

    1. Add “client min protocol = SMB2”
    2. Ensure this line does not exist, or is commented out with the #
      # map to guest = bad user
  4. Restart the samba service, ie:
    sudo systemctl restart smbd
  5. Back on the Windows client, use Windows Explorer (NOT Internet Explorer) to go to:
    \\ip.address
  6. It should pop up a Username/Password dialog box. Enter:
    Username:    \ims      (remember to add the \ slash before ims)
    Password:  whatever-is-your-IMS-password
  7. You should now be able to see the files on the server.
    If not, then you may need to talk to IMS about upgrading the “samba software” on the Linux server so that it supports SMBv2.

 

It can be frustrating to diagnose authentication issues because Windows caches the credentials and will keep reusing the last user/pass that “worked”, ie the unauthenticated-guest-access login.
To clear the client credentials on the client, open the command line
CMD
and type:
net use \\ip.address /delete

 

Reduce the Windows Client Security Settings

There are a couple of problems with adjusting the IMS server configuration (as per the above section).  It requires Linux expertise, and it requires all the users to enter the special password.

Instead, you can reduce the security of the Windows client computers, at least temporarily, until the server can be adjusted.

For more information about this setting and how to change it, see the following blog post and the referenced Microsoft Support article:
https://tech.nicolonsky.ch/windows-10-1709-cannot-access-smb2-share-guest-access/
https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/4046019/guest-access-in-smb2-disabled-by-default-in-windows-10-and-windows-ser

If you do not have administrator privileges on your local computer then you may need your IT department to make this change for you.

Error message: “Invalid protocol”