Failed to retrieve share list from server: Software caused connected abort. (Solved)

This blog post provides a solution for the ‘Failed to retrieve share list from server: Software caused connection abort.’ and ‘NT_STATUS_CONNECTION_DISCONNECTED’ error messages.

Warning: You use my networking instructions at your own risk. I think security is weakened by following the instructions I’ve provided below. You take responsibility for any and all issues that arise from using information I’ve provided. Sorry about that, but if you don’t like this warning, please don’t use the instructions.

Introduction

After a long hiatus I’m back to using Linux on a laptop. I want to occasionally put my feet up, place an old laptop running Linux on a lapdesk and work from a comfy seat. One of the first things I wanted to do was access files on my old NAS which resulted in the errors.

Thankfully the networking problem was easily solved and whilst I’m using Xubuntu, I’m sure the solution provided below is applicable to other Linux operating systems and I hope this information helps you.

What I did:

1. I opened a terminal window.
2. I then typed sudo apt-get install samba-common-bin and pressed enter.
3. Then I typed sudo mousepad /etc/samba/smb.conf and again pressed enter.
4. Then directly under workgroup = WORKGROUP I typed the following on the next line client min protocol = NT1 and on the following line client max protocol = SMB3, as shown below:
5. I don’t think a reboot was required, but you might want restart the computer.

After that I opened Thunar and was able to connection to my old NAS, browse, copy and paste files between my laptop and the NAS.

Smbclient

I got the NT_STATUS_CONNNECTION_DISCONNECTED message when running smbclient -L followed by the IP address of my NAS box. After making the changes to the smb.conf file, when I ran the command again, I saw the shared resources for the NAS box.

Final thoughts

I’m still using some old hardware and run a mixed OS environment at home. The solution wasn’t actually that complex, but just took a little while and I can understand that times change. I hope others find this blog post helpful.