guest access problem

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Mon, 20 Oct 1997, John Blair wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I'm having a problem with guest access.  Either I'm misunderstanding how
> the authentication process works, or this is a bug in Samba.  I wonder if
> somebody would be able to tell me which is the case.
> 
> The problem concerns guest access to a share.  As I understand the
> authentication process (as explained in the smb.conf man page), if a user
> doesn't supply a correct password and a service is marked "guest ok", the
> user should be granted access to the service as the guest user
> 
> I also understand that this should work regardless of whether or not
> security = share, user, or server.  However, in practice this does not seem
> to be the case.  In my experience, guest access is only properly granted in
> when security = share.  Here's an example that isolates the problem:
> 
> First, I use this minimal smb.conf file:
> 
> [global]
>         security = share
> 
> [tmp]
>         path = /tmp
>         guest ok = yes
>         read only = yes
> 
> smbclient allows me to connect to the share w/o a password:
> 
> (/usr/local/samba/lib)$ smbclient '\\FRODO\tmp' -N
> Added interface ip=138.26.25.10 bcast=138.26.255.255 nmask=255.255.0.0
> Server time is Sun Oct 19 23:41:33 1997
> Timezone is UTC-5.0
> Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 1.9.17p2]
> smb: \>
> 
> Next, I change security to user:
> 
> [global]
>         security = user
> 
> [tmp]
>         path = /tmp
>         guest ok = yes
>         read only = yes
> 
> This time smbclient asks me for a password.  I enter a bad password, which
> I think should have the effect of granting me guest access.

i believe that the GUESTSESSSETUP=1 compile-time option allows you to do:

smbclient '\\FRODO\tmp' -U%

which specifies a _null_ username and password.


but then again, i hate the concept of allowing guest access, even with a 
null username and password, _even_ for browsing.  so i'm not a good 
person to ask an opinion of on guest access.


luke