Places / Network Servers requires authentication

this shows the authentication window that pops up

The popup also shows for which machine you must authenticate. PLease fill in the login data as required by that machine. This is not a bug.

It says I have to log in fbn@PAUL domain PAUL

PAUL is the local hostname, fbn is the main Ubuntu user on this machine.

I tried the password of user fbn on that machine but that doesn't work.

If I change the Domain: field (domain test for example) the auth windows asks me for fbn@PAUL domain TEST.

Also, I'm not trying to connect to a special machine, I want to see the available shares on my network - why do I have to authenticate for this?

Ah forgot something: If it's not a bug - should I post such things to support in Launchpad next time? Wasn't sure about that.

To get a list of available shares you must login. If PAUL is the local machine make sure that you use smbpasswd on the local machine to set a samba password.

This imho is merely a support question (it's a bug though that this is a bit unintuitive) and thus should go to the ubuntu-users mailinglist.

To get a list on WinXP I don't have to log in (or is this something windows does in background?) - why do I have to log in on Ubuntu?

To get a list with smbpasswd I don't have to enter a valid login, just pressing enter on password question is enough:
smbpasswd -U fbn -L \\paul

And there is no information anywhere that I have to use smbpasswd on my local machine to enable browsing windows shares - is there any?

Maybe I'm too blind but I thought this would be like the Gnome philosophy - just as easy and straighforward as possible ...

Where can I place an improve request on this topic? :-)

IIRC winXP only shows machine names until you login, not the actual shares.

Dennis,

thanks again - the smbpasswd -a USER did the trick and I'm able to use this login information on the authentication window.

But why do I have to set up the local samba user with smbpasswd manually on the console? And there is no note in Places / Network Servers that I have to do this ...

Tell me, where can I file a improvement request about this?

Because you installed the samba *server* on the local machine. The network servers thing scans the network and wants to list all available machines. If you don't want this: don't install a local samba server or use places->connect to server instead of places-> network servers

I still don't get this.

I got the question wether I want to install SMB or NFS for file sharing, I choosed SMB and Ubuntu did the rest (installed the packages).

Not I'm unable to browse (if I don't know the smbpasswd command) the network shares because of my previous selection?

Don't get me wrong, I dont' have a problem with that but it seems not that logical to me or I still don't get the point.

It's a bad thing that samba doesn't autoconfigure itself more properly indeed, but that would be a bug (in bugzilla) against samba requesting for an enhancement.

Ok seems that there is not other way to handle it in Ubuntu.

Thanks for your help Dennis.