Cannot Lock /etc/smbpasswd

[Mike Clubine]

Fellow Samba Users:

This is my first attempt at running Samba.  I recently came into
possession of an older Sun Sparc 2 with a 4.6G drive, so I thought to
myself ... great!  I can run RH 6.0 and Samba on it and use it as a file
server.  Seemed like a good idea.

I installed Redhat, and went right to work configuring Samba.  After a
few hours I noticed that there was a newer version of Samba than was
shipped, so I promptly installed the latest rpm bringing me up to
samba-2.0.5a-1.

Now let me explain what I am trying to do.  I have a number of computers
running different versions of Windows (95/98/NT) on the network.  I'd
like them all to connect to a single share to use for all of the company
data.  Seeing as how it would be a pain to make a whole list of new
users, I decided to password protect things on a "share" level.  This if
I understand, means that each share has one password that everyone uses,
regardless of their username.

This all seemed fine and dandy.  I setup my share and sure enough I
could connect to the server and browse it at it's base level to find the
share I had created.  Now to login .... where do I specify this password
in the smb.conf file?  I thought maybe I had to make one user on the
system and put him on the user list?  I named him oalogin and put him in
the user section of the smb.conf file under this share, but that didn't
work.  So I tried putting the group name in there @outeractive, but that
didn't work.

So as I start digging around looking for answers, I check my error log
...

[1999/08/04 01:04:06, 0] passdb/smbpass.c:startsmbfilepwent(59)
  startsmbfilepwent: unable to lock file /etc/smbpasswd
[1999/08/04 01:04:06, 0] passdb/passdb.c:iterate_getsmbpwnam(147)
  unable to open smb password database.
[1999/08/04 01:04:06, 0] passdb/smbpass.c:startsmbfilepwent(59)
  startsmbfilepwent: unable to lock file /etc/smbpasswd
[1999/08/04 01:04:06, 0] passdb/passdb.c:iterate_getsmbpwnam(147)
  unable to open smb password database.

Great.  So even if I had set it up correctly, it wouldn't work. :)

I turned to the archives to try and see if anyone else had this problem,
and it claims that this bug was fixed in releases 2.0 or later.  Guess
not.  It also says that it only happens when you're trying to do an
update encrypted.  Nope, I don't have that turned on.

I do, however, have encrypted passwords turned on.  The reason for this
is that I don't want to have to go to each machine and hack it's
registry to get this to work.  That seems silly to me.

I'm a little confused and a little discouraged.  If anyone has taken the
time to read this far (I know I'm long winded, but trying to be
thorough), and has any ideas what could be the problem, please drop me a
line.

I've attached my /etc/smbpasswd file and my /etc/smb.conf file to give
you an idea what I'm dealing with.  I know it's a security issue, but I
can always change the passwords later.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Mike Clubine


--

 Michael A. Clubine     - clubine at outeractive.com
 Outeractive Consulting - http://www.outeractive.com

-------------- next part --------------
# Samba config file created using SWAT
# from 192.168.10.1 (192.168.10.1)
# Date: 1999/08/03 23:24:06

# Global parameters
[global]
    workgroup = OSTROM
    netbios name = SPARKY
    server string = Redhat Linux 6.0
    security = share
    encrypt passwords = yes
    null passwords = no
    log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
    max log size = 50
    socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
    dns proxy = No
    unix password sync = no
    comment = Redhat Linux 6.0
    password level = 0
    os level = 0
    preferred master = no
    domain master = no
    wins support = no
    dead time = 0
    debug level = 0
    load printers = no

[homes]
    comment = Home Directories
    read only = No
    browseable = No

[printers]
    comment = All Printers
    path = /var/spool/samba
    print ok = Yes
    browseable = No

[Outeractive]
    comment = Outeractive's Files
    path = /Outeractive
    admin users = @outeractive
    write list = @outeractive
    read only = No
    browseable = yes
    public = no
    guest only = no
    writable = yes
    user = @outeractive
    only user = no
-------------- next part --------------
oalogin:502:01FC5A6BE7BC6929AAD3B435B51404EE:0CB6948805F797BF2A82807973B89537:[U          ]:LCT-37A78313:
-------------- next part --------------
# Unix_name = SMB_name1 SMB_name2 ...
root = administrator admin
nobody = guest pcguest smbguest