samba-tng-alpha-1.1.tar.gz

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

ftp://samba.org/pub/samba/alpha and mirror sites

1)

i fixed a problem with nmbd's GETDC response, it is responding better but
still not perfectly (and 2.0.x and cvs main need to be fixed, as well) as
there exists no explanation for the correct response to locate a Domain
Controller using GETDC.

the upshot of fixing this is that joining an nt workstation to a TNG
domain is now _extremely_ fast: a couple of seconds, if that, and
USRMGR.EXE comes up very rapidly, too.

2)

i concluded that there is a lot of confusion being caused by using
smbpasswd to add users to a domain.  the default behaviour on creating a
user is to create the user with no password and account "disabled",
followed by changing the password.  this results in, with smbpasswd, the
account being created with the correct password, but the account disabled.

please use samedit.  samedit's "createuser username -p userpassword"
command goes through a series of instructions that include creating the
account (which is automatically disabled when created), followed by
setting the password, followed by enabling the account.

i have already disabled smbpasswd -m and -j options: i am considering just
disabling smbpasswd altogether, however i know that people are _not_ going
to like that, so really should implement smbpasswd in terms of samedit
commands.

time, time...

3)

elrond continues to send in daily patches that ultimately will help merge
TNG with cvs main, by getting TNG more cvs-main-like.

if anyone else wishes to assist with this, please notify everyone of your
interest by responding to samba-technical at samba.org, and we can take it
from there.

4)

various others, such as greg dickie, michael breuer, continue to send in
mini-updates which help to compile and run TNG, please keep 'em coming!

5)

profiles are still not operating correctly, i do not know why, it is
beginning to irritate me enough that i am probably going to do something
about it.

i now have, from various sources, legitimate versions of NT 5 and NT 4
installed in vmware 2.0 sessions.  i am not entirely happy with this: i
can only run one vmware session (i am using just xinit not X, i don't like
graphical OSes) at a time.  my thanks to darryl for his assistance,
suggestions, and for providing the entire samba team with vmware licenses:
i would be unable to do any work, right now, without vmware, as i only
have the one computer.

[btw does anyone, other than me, want to run vmware without having to run
X-windows, for example, running linux in console-mode and switching
between multiple vmware sessions on alt-f1 to alt-f12?]

6)

password changing.  oops!  i made a mistake in the Great Convert in
january, resulting in passing the wrong parameters over in the samr user
password change.

as i modified smbd to call the samr user password change functions instead
of accessing smbpasswd directly, this will have affected *all*
user-initiated password changes including win95, dos and wfwg _and_ nt
password changes.

so, if you have win95, please try changing a user password and report to
the list if it works or not.

i also fixed samedit's "ntpass" command to operate correctly at the same
time, because it too was minorly broken.

7)

the use of "netbios name" was a red herring and a false alarm.  it's
perfectly ok to use different netbios names for your server, although not
generally considered to be good "network policy", although it does
actually work.

8)

elrond spotted that some of the user profile information was not correctly
aligned.  please report any operational issues and domain user logon
problems, as usual, to samba-ntdom at samba.org, with a full report.


all reports should contain full information, including:

- your OS type

- your last cvs update date *and* time, or tng alpha version number

- your smb.conf file

- an explicit list of steps carried out to get you into the current state

for example, if you are using smbpasswd not samedit, please say so.
please consider including a typescript of the operations used.

please try and avoid reports just saying "it doesn't work": please send
reports saying "i carried out the following series of steps, it failed
here, the log files show error code xyz at this point, here's all the info
about my setup and OS config: here, you go deal with it, i'm bored with
all this not working, i give up".

it's starting to get there.  we're back at some of the key points that are
generally taken for granted, such as user logons and password changes.
printing and user profiles are the ones that really need to be dealt with,
now.

keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going :)

best regards,

luke

<a href=" mailto:lkcl at samba.org" > Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton    </a>
<a href=" http://cb1.com/~lkcl"  > Samba and Network Development   </a>
<a href=" http://samba.org"      > Samba Web site                  </a>
<a href=" http://mcp.com"        > Macmillan Technical Publishing  </a>
 
ISBN1578701503 DCE/RPC over SMB: Samba and Windows NT Domain Internals