[olug] Samba, Windows clients, and pulling my hair out

[Lou Duchez]

Thanks for the tip about the hosts file.  Will start fiddling with that 
immediately!

As it works out I run a nameserver so I can make all the zones I want 
for my domains.

I'm actually in charge of the wiring for the Terwilliker institute.  
That fool plumber Zabladowski thinks HE's got an important job ... ?  In 
the 21st century a solid Internet connection is more important than 
installing sinks.


> Good point about multiple credentials.
> *net use Z: /delete*
> net use \\MachineName\PRINT$ /delete
> disconnects those sessions immediately.
>
> HOSTS was missing just the hostname as well:
> 192.168.0.1 terwilliker.com terwilliker <http://terwilliker.com>
>
> On WinVista and above, the split tokens in the elevated command prompt
> versus the normal command prompt can cause a great deal of issues as well.
>
> Windows does not use NETBIOS by default anymore.  When DNS is setup
> properly, NETBIOS is not needed unless there are some very old windows
> machines or windows software.  But then how do you manage DNS in the home?
> dd-wrt has a built in DNS server in the form of dnsmasq.conf  Otherwise,
> open 5353 on host firewalls for mutlicast dns and man -k avahi.
>
> Thanks for sharing the smb.conf files, it is amazing how many parameters
> are available.
>
> So are you a mean piano teacher or something?
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045464/plotsummary
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 1:36 AM, Kevin <sharpestmarble at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> IIRC, SMB doesn't have any mechanism for re-authenticating. So once you
>> connect as guest, you're connected as guest until that connection is
>> allowed to lapse. This means unmounting any mapped network drives, closing
>> anything opened via UNC, and not accessing them for a while(5 mins, I
>> think).
>> On Jan 22, 2013 10:18 PM, "Lou Duchez" <lou at paprikash.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Mostly I'm posting this in case anyone else is having trouble with Samba.
>>>   I think I got it worked out.
>>>
>>> I set up a Samba share, I gave it a NetBIOS name, I figured out how to
>> let
>>> it allow guest access (no particular authentication).  So far so good.
>>>   Then I tried setting up another share, but requiring authentication.  No
>>> matter how much I tried, I couldn't get a Windows computer to
>> authenticate.
>>>   When I tried to connect from the Windows command line, after entering
>> the
>>> password, I would get the super-helpful message "System error 5 has
>>> occurred".
>>>
>>> My first clue as to what was going on was the fact that I could
>>> authenticate if I used the server's IP address rather than the NetBIOS
>> name
>>> I'd assigned it.
>>>
>>> Here is the long and short of it: I was trying to get to my Samba share
>>> via its NetBIOS name -- "\\TERWILLIKER\protectedshare" or whatever -- and
>>> that's not a good move.  Windows has trouble keeping track of the Samba
>>> share via NetBIOS, such that it may be able to find the share and try to
>>> authenticate, but then it gets all confused.  If you're going to rely on
>>> NetBIOS, you also probably have to go to the trouble of setting up a WINS
>>> server to support your NetBIOS name, otherwise your clients are going to
>>> connect inconsistently at best.  You can't even get around it by putting
>> an
>>> entry in \Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\**Hosts, because that depends upon
>>> Windows being bright enough to consistently recognize your NetBIOS name
>> as
>>> such and not just a zone to prepend to your domain name.
>>>
>>> What you CAN do is assign a FQDN to your server; that's something Windows
>>> and Linux see eye-to-eye on.  You can even put the FQDN in your
>>> \Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\**Hosts; it'd look something like this:
>>>
>>> 192.168.0.1 terwilliker.com
>>>
>>> So after that you'd access your share like:
>>>
>>> \\terwilliker.com\**protectedshare
>>>
>>> or even
>>>
>>> \\192.168.0.1\protectedshare
>>>
>>> After that, Samba seems to work per the documentation.
>>>
>>>
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