Posted inInformation Technology

How to Make Ubuntu 20.04 Work with Buffalo NAS

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek
Network drives

We’ve all been there. You install a new Ubuntu release and sh*t doesn’t work. It’s really frustrating when it is sh*t that has worked for years. Well, here is how you fix it.

Buffalo (and I suspect some other brands) are horribly behind when it comes to network standards and security. More importantly they never seem to push updates out for these things. I guess that is why they are cheap. What screwed you in Ubuntu 20.04 is a new default minimum standard for network communications. You are going to have to bookmark this fix and refer to it every time you upgrade to a new Ubuntu release until your Buffalo drive dies.

Adding insult to injury, Ubuntu no longer installs the needed packages by default.

When you select samba-common it will automatically select some other packages. Do this using Synaptic package manager, not that other thing you find in the sidebar menu. When you are done it will look like this.

Next you need to open a terminal window and edit a file which didn’t exist until you installed those packages. I always keep Jed installed on Linux machines for just such ocassions. 

sudo jed /etc/samba/smb.conf

You want to add the client line where I show it in the file.

client min protocol = NT1

Save the file and reboot. After that you should have no trouble accessing your Buffalo drive.

Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.