I am trying to to use File Sharing between two Ubuntu machines on a local network. box2 is running Ubuntu 14.04.3 and box3 is running Ubuntu 16.04, both OS are up to date.
Personal File Sharing Preferences for the folder “Public” on box3 are set to share public files on network and “Never” require a password.
When accessing the public folder from box2 a password is required for share public on box3.
Connection attempt as Anonymous without a password fail.
Unable to access location Failed to mount Windows share: Permission denied
Fun fact: the same thing happen when trying to access smb://box3/Public from box3.
I have also tried the settings “Require password: When writing files” and “Require password: Always”, this will cause
Oops! Something went wrong. Unhandled error message: Failed to mount Windows share: Permission denied
UPDATE
Reading this answer to a similiar (but not quite the same) problem, I decided to give Openssh a try, and installed openssh-server openssh-client. Voilà, I can now access the folder Public on box3. Just not via Samba. Permission is still denied.
I had same issue. The problem disappeared only when I removed whole [public] section from smb.config. I still don't know the cause, since the path in [public] was valid and the folder was accessible with proper permissions.