Problems encountered with Samba V2.2.7A on OpenVMS

[John E. Malmberg]

> 
> About the "UCX$NOBODY/TCPIP$NOBODY" issue, I completely agree with you, and
> I'll make the necessary changes in the H files in order to prefer
> TCPIP$NOBODY

It is wrong to use either account for SAMBA.  The SAMBA GUEST account 
should be an independent account.

The UCX$/TCPIP$NOBODY accounts are only present if you have the UCX or 
TCPIP program and have activated on of the optional features that use them.

They are intended for internal use of the TCPIP program, and should not 
be used for other purposes.


The SAMBA GUEST account is not really a guest account, and as I find out 
more about it from the SAMBA-TECHNICAL list, I suspect that it may need 
further tailoring to give the security level that OpenVMS users expect.

This also may be needed to provide proper accounting of it's actions.

The samba technical list tells me that the only reason the account is 
named "GUEST" is that is what some Microsoft documentation called it.
It is not a guest account, it is a non-privileged account used for 
network operations, even for non-guest activitied.


I strongly recommend that you do not use the TCPIP or any other 
pre-existing accounts from other products and create a special SAMBA 
guest account, with it's own home directory.

There is a command procedure in the SAMBA 2.0.6. to create such an 
account as SAMBA needs it.

It creates an account with "SAMBA__GUEST" (two underscores).

The kit can be found on the OpenVMS Freeware Version 5.0 CD-ROM.  This 
is available from a link at http://www.hp.com/go/openvms/


> However, this is just defining the default guest account, and you easily can
> change it by either editing the SMB.CONF file (line "guest account = xxx")
> or using SWAT.

I strongly recommend creating a local guest account and doing a manual 
change until the SAMBA default can be changed to use a dedicated "GUEST" 
account.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
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