[Samba] windows 7 machine account fails to authenticate against samba PDC

[Fabio Muzzi]

On 06/22/2011 12:31 AM, mrArcabuz wrote:
> Hi, it's been a while since the original message appeared, but here's my
> experience in case someone finds it useful:

[...]

>   I changed the machine account name to uppercase in the passwd & shadow
> files and the message does not appear anymore in the logs.
>
>   This would explain why it's not an issue on an LDAP backend, as the uid
> there is case insensitive.

I have experienced the same issue with the same configuration (PDB 
backend, no LDAP) and I can confirm that /etc/passwd entries created by 
adding machines to domain (via the "add machine script") show an 
UPPERCASE name in Samba (that is, when I issue a "pdbedit -L" command) 
but a lowercase name in /etc/passwd, resulting in errors being logged 
when the machine connects to Samba because its username (uppercase) 
cannot be found in /etc/passwd (where it is written in lowercase).

The workaround is in fact to edit /etc/passwd to se the machines 
usernames to uppercase.

I don't understand why and when this behaviour changed.

I have a very old Samba installation that shows the older machine 
entries in PDB file being lowercase, as in this example:

#pdbedit -L
...
nb-gmg$:1051:NB-GMG$
...


and other entries in the same PDB file being all uppercase, like this:

NOTEBOOK-FLAVIA$:4294967295:NOTEBOOK-FLAVIA$

Since all of the /etc/passwd file entries are lowercase, the second 
example (NOTEBOOK-FLAVIA$) does not authenticate correctly. You can also 
see that the output of the "pdbedit -L" command reports a wrong unix UID 
(4294967295) for the uppercase entry, because it cannot find it in 
/etc/passwd (being lowercase in passwd).

If I edit /etc/passwd and set the username in uppercase there, then 
everything works, and also the unix UID shown by "pdbedit -L" is correct.




-- 

Fabio "Kurgan" Muzzi

- IZ4UFQ -

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