Not happy campers

Stephen L Arnold arnold.steve at ensco.com
Wed Mar 3 00:57:58 GMT 1999


I'm not sure what to tell you guys, other than it works for me (and 
I bet you really hate hearing that ;-)  All I can say is that 
pretty much every problem I've had with samba/windoze clients have 
been due to one or more of the following:

1) My own ignorance (a big one)
2) Flaky hardware/network configuration
3) Broken M$ client stuff/stupid defaults

I only have experience with small LANs and 1.9.18p8 & p10 (I 
haven't tried 2.x yet; it's on my list of things to do, along with 
about a million other things...)  I have one or two suggestions 
anyway (see below).

Alex says:

> On my Samba server I can see and store files regardless of
> case but some files are not retrievable with W95 complaining
> that either the file or the server does not exist.
> I have suspected and tested filename case, file permissions,
> file locking and code page compatibility but the problem remains.

This sounds like a browsing or underlying network problem (it 
*could* be permission related, but you said you checked that).

And Dave Walton says:

> 1.  Files or directories in a share are visible.
> 2.  Files or directories in an all-uppercase subdirectory of the
> share are visible. 3.  Lowercase or mixed-case subdirectories of the
> share appear to be empty. 4.  All-uppercase files can be opened. 5. 
> Lowercase or mixed-case files cannot be opened, and Win95 complains
> that the file is not found. 6.  Exception to #5:  At a DOS prompt,
> lowercase and mixed-case files can be opened, but ONLY if the case
> is typed correctly.  (This does not help with directory access.)
> 
> My setup has:
> 
>   case sensitive = no
>   preserve case = yes
>   short preserve case = yes
> 
> (Changing those to all "no" has no effect on the problem.)

Things that work at the DOS prompt but not in explorer usually 
point to name resolution or browsing problems (your above case 
settings look okay).  Also, when moving from 1.9.x to 2.x, some of 
the defaults changed (at least if you expect the same behavior) so 
you can't just use the same smb.conf file (do read the changes doc 
in the 2.x package).

My setup is for samba to be both the domain and local browse master 
(no PDC or WINS).  My case settings are the same as above (along 
with "mangle case = yes").  I have exported the /usr/doc tree as a 
readonly share and the /usr/src tree as well (with a valid users 
list).  These trees have many mixed-case file and directory names, 
along with both uppercase and lowercase only names.  All files and 
dirs are readable from an OSR2 client.  Here are my share 
definitions:

[docs]
  comment = Linux docs
  path = /usr/doc
  public = yes
  writable = yes
  printable = no 
  write list = [name changed to protect the not so innocent]

[source]
  comment = Source Code
  path = /usr/src
  valid users = [list of valid users with linux accounts]
  public = no
  writable = yes
  printable = no

The main difference is that public=no on the second share makes the 
share invisible to those not in the list of valid users.

Here's a short list of gotchas I've run into:

Authentication problems -> win95 vredr and NT4SP3 updates require 
encrypted passwords (or reg hack).

NT4SP3 browsing/auth problem -> browsing requires open connection 
when samba is in user-level security mode (ie, map a drive from a 
command prompt first).

File access problems -> win95 RWIN setting needed "adjusting".

Access denied when saving to a share (even though it's set as 
writable) -> incorrect permissions on the unix side (directory was 
owned by root).

Intermittent browsing problems (LAN wide) -> over the length limit 
for a linear bus ethernet (ie, too much coax).

Other tips:  remove NetBlooie and IPX (unless you really need them) 
and disable the clients from browse master competition (File and 
Printer Sharing properties in Network properties).  Also, make sure 
you have proper name resolution for both TCP/IP and NetBIOS (ie, 
some combination of DNS, WINS, hosts, lmhosts, etc).

I can usually only spend the time on configuration problems that 
are directly relevant to work (unless I can do it at home, but I 
only have a single win95a client at the moment; wait till I finish 
networking the house...).  Also, I'm not really a unix sysadmin or 
networking guru dude so there're lots of things I don't know.

I do know that even a simple setup like mine is a very complex 
dance between marginally functional clients and a loosely defined 
and not well documented protocol (SMB) implemented as a software 
layer on top of a completely different OS & filesystem.  And 
sometimes it's not easy getting everything working right.

I'll be glad to try and muddy the waters a little more if you can 
give some more details on your problems.

Regards, Steve


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Stephen L Arnold                      http://www.rain.org/~sarnold
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
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