Windows XP and veto files

[Colin Higgs]

We've been running into a problem with our samba servers (2.2.3 on 
RedHat 7.3) for a little while now where Windows XP boxes would refuse 
to access the [homes] share for users, while win9x, NT, 2000 all would. 
After some head scratching, it seems the problem was down to this setting:

veto files = /.*/

which was there to prevent windows users from deleting their dot files.

It seems XP accesses shares somewhat differently and, as far as we can 
make out from the logs, is trying to access shares/folders by "cd"-ing 
to the folder and then asking to list "." - which, of course, does not 
exist because samba has veto'd it...

Our web searches at the time found quite a few people asking this 
question, but none with answers - I haven't tried searching since we 
found the solution. Perhaps it would be useful to add a warning about 
this setting mixed with XP in the smb.conf man page?

Hoping this will help someone spend less time than I did on the problem...

Colin.

-- 
Colin Higgs,
School of Engineering and Electronics
University of Edinburgh                 Email:  colin.higgs at ed.ac.uk
King's Buildings, Mayfield Road,        Tel:    +44 (0)131 6508557
Edinburgh, Scotland, EH9 3JL            Fax:    +44 (0)131 6506551