...or, Rebecca can access Serval. Rebecca is the name of Linux Mint 17.1 (I'm using the Mate interface), and Serval is the node name of my Windows 7 Home Premium PC (this computer). ...and, Rebecca is a virtual machine; Rebecca is running on a copy of Oracle VirtualBox that resides on Serval. When I first started up Rebecca, she wasn't able to see any other system on the network. I had to set the following network settings for Rebecca:
I was then able to see Serval on the network from Rebecca, but when I double clicked on Serval, Serval refused the connection. The error I got was:
Rebecca was able to see and connect to Bobcat, a Windows 8.1 tablet on the network, so I thought it was a problem with the security settings on Serval. I edited Serval's Firewall and allowed Remote connections to get through; didn't help. So I googled the Internet for an answer and found that a modification on Rebecca fixed the problem for some people. I edited /etc/samba/smb.conf and commented out the line "valid users = %S"; it didn't work. Maybe Rebecca wasn't actually addressing Serval, and the "Failed to retrieve share list from server" message was because there wasn't any computer to get a share list from. I edited out /etc/hosts file and added the line: lan address of Serval "Serval" (192.168.x.x SERVAL). After rebooting Rebecca I was able to see Serval:
I saw tons of postings on the Internet about people who were unable to make a Samba connection to Windows 7, so this should be useful information to a lot of Windows/Linux users.