Samba and Windows 2000 SP2

[Dave Anderson]

How well does Samba work with Windows 2000 SP2 clients? I'm in the process of finishing my home network, but I'm having some troubles getting attached to the Samba server.

Details:

Network is working fully in terms of cabling and communications. Each machine is being assigned an IP address by the Linux box, which is also a DHCP server. I can ping all machines from any machine on network, including the Linux Samba server.

Latest Samba has been compiled and successfully installed.

Doing most of the testing from my 2000 SP2 laptop. It sees the Samba machine, but when I go to access it, I'm prompted for a password.

More details:

Imported registry change for unencrypted passwords. Logging into laptop as 'dave' and have a user 'dave' on the Samba server - both Windows 2000 SP2 and Linux user 'dave' have same password assigned.

Samba config file it setup to just share users home directories. So when I click on the Samba server, I should see "dave's" home directory w/o being prompted.

Confused! Would like to resolve tonight if possible.

2000 SP2 desktop machine has same problem.

Any help is greatly welcome. TIA.

[dud]

need more info in your network.
Is the linux/samba box a domain controller and a wins server ?
who is controlling the logons on your network? linux or win2k?

[Dave Anderson]

need more info in your network.
Is the linux/samba box a domain controller and a wins server ?
who is controlling the logons on your network? linux or win2k?


Linux/samba box is not a domain controller.

I haven't setup who is controlling the logons. Not sure what you mean there as I haven't done that before.

[dud]

I´m not a network or samba expert but I think that in order to have it working you should have a windows network controller, for matching the windows logon password with your linux box password. Samba can act like a domain controller. When you enable it (the domain controller option) in Samba in your win2k machines you will log in the network on a boot prompt. Then you can use the facilities of integrating linux in a windows network. You can´t use samba if you don´t have a windows network.

[Dave Anderson]

I am not Samba or networking expert either, which is perhaps part of the problem.

For some reason I thought that Samba handled all of this password checking already.

I thought that if user 'dave' existed on Win2k with 'xyzxyz' password, and user 'dave' existed on Linux with 'xyzxyz' password, and that I had encrypted passwords turned off in Windows, I'd be good to go.

Is that not the case?

[Malakin]

Here is how I recall doing it *without* disabling encrypted passwords.

add the share entry in your smb.conf, let's say you allow access to user "bob", now bob must also have access to the directory you've pointed his share at obviously. I think you have to set "security = share" in smb.conf also.

add bob to the samba password list.
"smbpasswd -a bob"

If it doesn't prompt you for a password when you add bob then do this 2nd step (depends on samba version I think).
"smbpasswd bob"

Now if you don't want to have to login every time you connect to the share sync it with the user/password on the windows box that you're logging in from.

restart samba, might be "/etc/init.d/smb restart" depending on your distro.

now you should just be able to type "\\1.2.3.4\bobsshare" into windows and it will work, using the right ip\share name of course :)

If you want to use names instead of ip's you can just add then to the /etc/hosts file in linux and I think it's c:/winnt/system32/drivers/etc/hosts or something like that for windows.

It's been a little while since I did this so I hope I didn't miss anything.

Edit: I have it working fine with win2k sp2

[ 11 October 2001: Message edited by: Malakin ]

[Dave Anderson]

I've spent a few hours tonight working on the problem. I enabled encrypted passwords and eventually determined the problem is something with Windows 2000 SP2.

I can connect to the Samba server from my Windows 98 SE box (this is with encrypted passwords).

I can connect to the Samba server from my Windows XP laptop (this is with encrypted passwords).

I can't connect from my WIN2k SP2 desktop machine. When I click on the workgroup name it gives me 'invalid operation was attempted on an active network connection.' I've read a few other people having similiar problems on Google Groups and most of them never resolved it. I tried all sorts of things - adding entries to lmhosts, playing with TCP/IP properties, etc. 'net view proxy' or 'net view \\proxy' (proxy is the Samba server) times out as well. I can ping the Samba server using both the IP address and the actual name proxy.

I also went through all a variety of documentation at Samba's site. Nothing has helped, unfortunately. XP and 98SE are fine, 2000 isn't even though it basically has the same settings. I figure my options are to:

1) Fallback to Win2k SP1.

2) Upgrade to XP.

I think I'm going to fallback to SP1 first as I'm curious to find out if this is related to SP2 or not. I think it is given all the comments on Google. However, I think ultimately I'll upgrade to XP. I have the hacked copy so no activation worries here.

Thanks for all help.

[Dave Anderson]

Damn. Upgrading to XP didn't help - same problem. I have no idea how to proceed on this.

[Dave Anderson]

I figured out the problem, just don't know why.

I took the Netgear card out of my 98SE box and put it into my XP box (which had a Kingston card). BOOM! Everything worked great in XP - detected the card and I connected to Samba on the initial connection. All of the TCP/IP settings are identical to that of the Kingston, so I have no idea why the Kingston can't connect. The Kingston card does work because I can telnet into my Linux box over the LAN.

Very strange. I'm going to try putting the Kingston card into my 98SE box, load the Kingston drivers, and see what happens. I hate to have to buy a new network card. Perhaps it is an issue with the build-in XP/2000 drivers for the Kingston.

[TheMuso]

Firstly. Samba 2.2.1a does support win2k SP2 as I am running it on my home network now with no hitch. Secondly, I would suggest using samba as a domain controller for every machine as it makes it easier to keep passwords in sync everywhere. And, as previously stated, you can use win2k encrypted passwords. Just be sure to have the passwords synched between linux accounts and samba accounts and set asside a good secure place for all user profiles.

[airedale]

It worked fine for me, and all I did was follow the NHF. I am now running Windows XP, but at the time, it did work, and where I work I have samba setup and it works exactly the same there!

[Dave Anderson]

Yes, I realize now the latest Samba works with Win2k SP2. Weird problem with my apparently faulty network card.

I'll look into Samba being a PDC, but I'm not too worried about keeping passwords synched on a 4 user network. :)