Samba 2.2.8 on VMS 7.3-1

[John E. Malmberg]

Geoff Roberts wrote:
> 
> Still having difficulty making Samba useable.
> 
> As above.  To an XP box.  No domains involved.
> 
> It now asks for username/password but never authenticates for some reason.
> (SMB is set to use encrypted p/w and XP does so by default).

The username must exist on the OpenVMS system, and have both read and 
write access to it's default directory, and to SAMBA_ROOT:[VAR].  The 
password is validated against the Samba password file or a remote server.

But the UIC used comes from the OpenVMS account.

Also, the SAMBA_GUEST account must exist, and it must have read and 
write access to it's default directory and to SAMBA_ROOT:[VAR].  Because 
of the unique security requirements, I strongly recommend that a special 
account SAMBA__GUEST be used.

The SAMBA_GUEST account is misnamed.  It is not really a guest account, 
and is required for most clients to do any access to the server.

When you disable the "Guest" account on a Microsoft Server, it is not 
totally disabling the account.  Certain network operations still use the 
security information from that account according to people who work on 
the main SAMBA core.

> Also could someone point me to some *VMS Specific* docs.  The online html
> docs are useful but are rather too unix specific for someone that doesn't speak Unix.

For Samba 2.0.6 and earlier, I put a FAQ on comp.os.vms and in 
Encompasserve.  http://www.google.com should be able to find it.

A couple of people on comp.os.vms have expressed an interest in writing 
up a more OpenVMS friendly how-to or quick start for SAMBA, but I have 
not seen any documentation.  Nor have I seen them post on this mailing list.

The comp.os.vms newsgroup is an alternate place for asking about SAMBA 
for OpenVMS.

Also as SAMBA for OpenVMS is more closely tracking the behavior of the 
UNIX SAMBA, sometimes an answer can be found in the main SAMBA mailing 
list.  Be warned, that one has a higher volume.

> (Like me).  Is there some UID equivalent that needs to be poked in somewhere in
> addition to username and hashed password?  Is there some way to make it use
> the SYSUAF instead of a separate user database?

As I posted above.  Samba on OpenVMS uses the SYSUAF for two accounts 
for every connection.

To get it to just use the SYSUAF, you need to disable encrypted 
passwords.  Other changes may be required.

> I'll post my smb.conf or anything else that might help.

Posting the entire smb.conf or other large logs rarely helps.

Increasing the debug level and then looking at the last few lines of the 
resulting smbd log in SAMBA_ROOT:[VAR] will usually show what the 
problem is.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only