How I fixed my Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) Client’s problem with my Linux 2.4 kernel Samba server?
Problem:
The problem started when the server required a new hard disk. I decided to install a new hard disk and upgrade to RedHat 7.3 (2.4.18-3). During the install I opted to have ‘shadow passwords’ and MD5 enabled. This is where my problems began…
The Windows XP workstations saw the Samba server without a hitch. It was the Mac OS 10.4 that didn’t see it. I would get an error message to the effect that the Alias is broken. Any attempts to “fix it” resulted in another error message saying that I had no rights to delete this object.
Solution 1 (didn’t work, ultimately):
Going into terminal/BSD mode on the Macs (I have too which allowed me to check myself), I used
smbclient –L <servername>
only to get “…error = -36”.
I looked up the error in the Mac’s knowledge bas and the Mac web site said it has to do with passing the SMB password in the clear. I tried to set up the Mac by –
sudo pico /etc/nsmb.conf
adding a line (the file is empty)
[default]
minauth=none
And then doing a
sudo chmod
a+r /etc/nsmb.conf
Results:
And then restart the Mac. This is supposed to allow passwords in the clear (albeit at an increased security risk…) on the Mac. However, this was no help.
Solution 2:
The problem, it turns out was that in the server side when the setting is
encrypt passwords = yes
that the Samba server looks for the /etc/passwd file for the user hashed password. However, because I was using shadow passwords that lookup would fail.
The only way I could get around it is to reinstall the kernel without shadow passwords.
Any suggestions on how else to resolve it? Please e-mail Rechtman-at-aol.com