Netscape not opening shares correctly?

[axs at zurich.ibm.com]

Hi!
I think I am fighting with Netscape, but I am not so sure what is going on.

Environment:
- We are using Samba (1.9.18p3) to access our AFS filespace from Win95.
- This is Win95 OSR2 if it matters.
- Due to security concerns we disabled the password caching of Win95 (so no
 *.pwl files are generated).
- All experiments are started after a reboot of Win95.

If I try to open a URL like
     file://\\smbsrv\afs\z\restricted\index.html
Netscape says
     "Netscape is unable to find the file or directory anmed:
          //smbsrv/z-afs/restricted/index.html
     Check the name and try again."

If I open manually a connection to the respective share on the Samba server
smbsrv, then I get the file in Netscape correctly. Even if I now destroy my
smbd process on smbsrv, if I open the above URL again, it can fetch the
file again - so I guess Win95 must have cached my password in memory.
Much harder to pinpoint is the fact that after a user is logged into Win95
(and our NT domain)  for an unknown time somehow the ability to open a URL
like the above is lost - even if it was open some hours before and a manual
reconnect is necessary. Has the password caching of Win95 in memory maybe a
certain lifetime?


If the passwd caching via *.pwl files in Win95 is enabled again, the
problem seems to vanish - I guess it is now using the *.pwl information,
which is permanent?


Interestingly enough MS Internet Explorer does not show these problems ...

Can somebody shed some light on this story?
Thank you very much!
Axel Tanner
_______________________________________________________________

  Axel Tanner
  IBM Zurich Research Laboratory    email: axs at zurich.ibm.com
  Saumerstr. 4                      phone:    +41/1/724 82 49
  CH-8803 Rueschlikon               fax  :    +41/1/724 89 59
  Switzerland                  http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~axs
_______________________________________________________________