[NBLUG/talk] why is Samba so bloody awful

[ME]

Bob Blick said:
> Walter Hansen said:
>>      To avoid pulling hairs out use the web interface. You have to do
>> some
>> minor setup, but it seems to make a lot more sense in between the
>> year or so that I change my samba setup.
>
> SWAT is working, I get no errors in the smbd or nmbd log files.
> LinNeighborhood shows the shares on the local machine, and if I change
> things in smb.conf and restart it, those changes do take place.
>
> It really acts almost as if there's no network cable between the two
> machines, but that is not the case, vnc, ssh etc all work fine. ports
> 137-139 are open.
>
> If I try to force a connection from a windows machine(NET USE..), it is
> acknowledged but it won't authenticate. Looking in the log.smbd on the
> linux machine, it says the user is not found in passdb. But I've run
> smbadduser, the user exists and there's a password, so I guess it's just
> one of those things that doesn't work because it doesn't want to.

I know a lot of people who have great success with Samba. I expect this is
a configuration issue.

> This gets back to the original subject, "why is Samba so bloody awful"?

I don't think it is. I have been using it for over 5 years and find it
works flawlessly for me.

> Neither smbd nor nmbd seem to be working properly. I've both created an
> smb.conf file by hand and also let SWAT do it.
>
> I'm open for any suggestions.

What happens when you use smbclient from one linux box to itself (by the
exposed IP, not loopback) and specify the username?

# smbclient -U usernametoauthas -W workgroup -M netbiosName -I
IP.Address.By.Numbers

Specify *everything* above and then enter the password for that username
for both linux boxes to the linux box that seems to be unavailable.

Examine the logs. If you still get an error about no such
password/username i the password file, then we can look at that. Don't
even include tests for windows boxes here.

What happens when you take that same smbmount line to the other linux box?
Do you still get the same problems? examine the log file data on the
problem machine.

There is something mis-configured. It just needs to be found.

You do realize that Windows 95,98 and ME OS do not support more than one
username per session? That means you authenticate to all windows shares
with the same username as you first "log into windows"

Windows NT, 2000 and XP permit you to specify a username other than the
one you have used when you logged into windows.

-ME