Windows SMB shares

Troubleshooting SMB shares creation, mounting, and related issues on Windows

SMB related errors happen during VM start and look like one of the following:

Configuring SMB shares...
Enter your Windows account password:
mount: mounting //192.168.64.1/docksal-c on /c failed: Connection refused
exit status 255

Configuring SMB shares...
Enter your Windows account password:
mount: mounting //192.168.64.1/c on /c failed: Operation now in progress...
exit status 255

If you ignored these errors and tried to start a project, then it will most likely fail with an error like this:

ERROR: for cli  Cannot create container for service cli: error while mounting vo
lume with options: type='none' device='/c/Users/alex/projects/myproject' o='bind': no such file or directory
ERROR: Encountered errors while bringing up the project.

Root Causes

During VM start Docksal creates shares for all your local drives, docksal-c for C:, docksal-d for D: etc. If share creation fails, Docker will not be able to access your files.

Even if shares were created successfully, mounting them from within the VM may still fail for some reason. In that case, Docker also will not be able to access your files.

Troubleshooting

1. Docker Desktop

If you use Docker Desktop application check that you have shared the drive with Docker Desktop application.

Share your Windows drives with Docker Desktop

2. Windows and Minimized Elevated Prompts

When Docksal VM is being created, VirtualBox needs to configure network adapter and requires administrative permissions for that. Those elevated prompts are sometimes appear minimized on the taskbar. Pay attention to them and reply Yes. There are warning about this in console:

(docksal) Check network to re-create if needed...
(docksal) Windows might ask for the permission to create a network adapter. Sometimes, such confirmation window is minimized in the taskbar.
(docksal) Found a new host-only adapter: "VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter #2"
(docksal) Windows might ask for the permission to configure a network adapter. Sometimes, such confirmation window is minimized in the taskbar.
(docksal) Windows might ask for the permission to configure a dhcp server. Sometimes, such confirmation window is minimized in the taskbar.

If you ignored those elevated requests or got distracted and they had timed out, or if you accidentally replied No, then the adapter fail to set up properly and your only option would be to remove vm with fin vm remove and start it again.

3. Check for Windows Network Settings Issues

Determine your local IP address. Usually you can do that by running ipconfig and looking for an active adapter that has “Local Area Connection” in the name.

Getting your IP

Open explorer and navigate to \\<your.host.ip.address>\. It should open with no errors and you should see your network shares.

Usually there are some shares, but you may have none. If there is no shares but IP opens without any error messages, then you should be good with this step.

Your shares

But if you get errors when trying to access IP, then there is an issue with your Windows network settings and you need to fix it. Docksal can not fix it for you, because there are dozens of reasons why it might fail to work.

The most usual case is “Files and Printer sharing” being not enabled. Enable it in network settings and try opening that IP again.

If after enabling files sharing you still can not access your IP via Explorer, then see this elaborate post on superuser about issues with File/Printer sharing on Windows. Hopefully it helps. Do not proceed to next steps if you have not fixed the issue because they will fail too.

Friendly reminder: if everything fails to make it working, then you might be limited to re-installing Windows. We test Docksal on a clean Windows 10 installation and make sure it works.

4. Check that Docksal IP is Working

NOTE: At this step we assume you had already run fin vm start and it had failed with error related to shares or mounting. You checked out the first step and there seems to be no issues with accessing your local IP via explorer. (If error with vm start is not related to mounting or shares, then see regular troubleshooting guide.)

In this step you need to check access to Docksal IP. Open explorer and navigate to \\192.168.64.1\. This is the IP that VirtualBox adapter assigns to your host machine. Just like in the previous step, it should open with no errors and now you should see your network shares.

Your shares2

If you get errors when trying to open it, then there is an issue with VirtualBox network adapter. The most common reason is Windows Firewall blocking it. Try disabling your Firewall and check if it helps. If disabling firewall helped, then you either need to keep it this way or create an incoming rule for your firewall to allow all traffic to all ports from IP 192.168.64.100.

If you disabled Windows Firewall, but you still can not access this IP address, then it is not firewall to blame. You would need to refer to the same elaborate post on superuser about issues with File/Printer sharing on Windows.

In worst case try removing Docksal VM with fin vm remove, uninstall VirtualBox, reboot, install VirtualBox and start vm again.

If all options fail, you might be limited to re-installing Windows. We had cases when people had mysterious issues related to shares mounting. They re-installed Windows and everything worked like a charm.

5. Check that Drives’ Shares Exist

If both IPs are working, then it’s not the network access issue.

Open explorer and navigate to \\192.168.64.1\. Make sure that you see and can access shares that Docksal should have created for your local drives. docksal-c, docksal-d etc.

If you see the shares but can not access them, then most likely you hit some edge case. Easiest fix is to stop Docksal VM, remove those shares manually using Windows UI and start VM back again.

If you don’t see those shares altogether, then there is an issue with shares creation.

Possible common reasons:

  • mistyped password
  • Microsoft account should use Microsoft account password, not the one that is used to unlock PC
  • group policies prevent share creation

Check your password. Check that you can create shares, but do not create Docksal shares manually unless you know which permissions to set.

Try running fin vm restart. If the issue with share creation does not go away and you think it not password or policies, then see step 6.

6. Check Your Password

For Microsoft Account use Microsoft Account password not the one you use to unlock your PC.

Your password can NOT contain: , (comma), \ (back slash) or ' (single quote) symbol because the password is being passed to the console mount command.

Other special symbols are not an issue, but in case your password contains some other special symbols and you see errors that contain Invalid argument:

...
Configuring SMB shares...
Enter your Windows account password:
mount: mounting //192.168.64.1/docksal-c on /c failed: Invalid argument
exit status 255
Mount command failed... Trying an alternative method...
mount: mounting //192.168.64.1/docksal-c on /c failed: Invalid argument
exit status 255

In this case, try simplifying your password. If it works with a new password, then create an issue on GitHub (see step 6), so we could investigate and fix.

7. Report an Issue

If you checked all the steps above and it didn’t help, then report an issue on GitHub and we will investigate the edge case.

If you have questions on resolving issues with steps above, try searching the issue queue or if you are stuck, you can also create an issue on GitHUb to ask a question. Describe which step you stumbled on, what fails, what is the error, what did you try to resolve it, and provide the output you are getting and the fin sysinfo output.