[Samba] Citrix Teaser

[Tim Carlier]

All,

Was wondering if anyone has got a similar setup to what I've got below and 
has seen the same behaviour which I've run across...

I'm running Samba 2.2.2 on a Solaris 2.6 host, connecting to it via either 
regular desktop PC's (x86) or Sun Sparc Workstations, also running Solaris 
but with a Citrix client connection to a Win2K Metaframe XP (not WinXP) 
server.  I've configured and built Samba fine, installed a simple conf file 
(same as I've used for years...) and it works - for a while.  A client can 
login to their Workstation and crank up a Citrix session.  They go to 
connect to a share on the Samba server or just browse it, and usually it 
just comes straight up.  The next user comes along though, logs in and 
tries to make a connection in the same way.  This time though, they can't 
make a connection, and Windows responds by prompting for a username and 
password, even though both the users have valid logins and 
passwords.  Looking at the running processes on the Samba server, (have 
tried running either as a daemon or via inetd - same results) - it looks 
like the smbd or nmbd processes are attempting to respawn, but at the same 
time this confuses the client(s) and all of a sudden no-one can 
authenticate.  Users that one minute were happily connected all of a sudden 
are prompted for a username and password which doesn't accept.  Looking in 
the log files, nothing is reported about the repeated prompts.

I've tried various security = methods in the conf file.  Basically how I 
want to authenticate is back to an NT/Win2K box - however in our network, 
we run AD on Win2K, and utilise a PDC emulator (currently in mixed mode) to 
allow backwards compat for other machines whilst everyone gets up to speed 
with AD.  In my conf file, I've tried pointing to this PDC emulator or 
another local Win2K Domain Controller, and authentication seems to be 
working fine - that initial time, and then fails once several clients start 
to hit the Samba server.

To fix the problem, I basically need to kill the smbd|nmbd daemons and 
restart them.  Then, from clients, I'm able to connect in again.  However, 
it tends to last only minutes until at least a couple of users attempt to 
connect back to the server and it knocks itself out.  Strange huh.  I 
figured this had to worth a post since I couldn't find much about it 
anywhere so far.  Has anyone seen this style of authentication behaviour 
before and might know where to begin looking for clues as to what's going on?

I have tried both binaries and compiling from the source - have had similar 
problems, so I think what I've built is OK.  Not sure if the problem though 
is somehow related to the Citrix connection, and the way users are 
authenticating from different hosts, but effectively from their parent 
Citrix server (using one IP address) back to the Samba server, but with a 
unique session.  I'm running Citrix Metaframe XP FR1 on a Win2K Server (SP2).

Please cc any ideas to: tim at iinet.net.au

Regards,

--
Tim Carlier, B.Sc, CNE, CCA | E-Mail : tim at iinet.net.au
Mobile: +61 409 446 604     | WWW    : http://www.ii.net/~tim/