[Samba] A working solution to the XP domain reboot problem

[Aaron K. Johnson]

Hey,

I worked for days on this, and I want to share the solution I stubled across.

I got this error message from my wife XP laptop:

"Windows cannot connect to the domain, either
because the domain controller is down or otherwise unavailable, or because
your computer account was not found.  Please try again later.  If this
message continues to appear, contact your system administrator for
assistance."

to stop this and be free and happy, do this:

follow everything in http://hr.uoregon.edu/davidrl/samba.html#SAMBA-PDC

then, use this smb.conf, tailored to your system, and follow my instructions 
below it, and hopefully it will work.

# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/net-fs/samba/files/smb.conf.example,v 1.3 
2002/08/27 20:39:48 woodchip Exp $
# This is the main Samba configuration file. You should read the
# smb.conf(5) manual page in order to understand the options listed
# here. Samba has a huge number of configurable options (perhaps too
# many!) most of which are not shown in this example
#
# Any line which starts with a ; (semi-colon) or a # (hash) 
# is a comment and is ignored. In this example we will use a #
# for commentry and a ; for parts of the config file that you
# may wish to enable
#
# NOTE: Whenever you modify this file you should run the command "testparm"
# to check that you have not made any basic syntactic errors. 
#
#======================= Global Settings =====================================
[global]
domain logons = yes
domain admin group = root @wheel
domain guest group = nobody @guest
guest account = smbguest
log level = 3
log file = /var/log/samba.log
logon home = \\MYBOX\home
netbios name = MYBOX
os level = 99
preferred master = yes
remote announce = 192.168.1.255/mydomain
remote browse sync = 192.168.1.255
hosts allow = 192.168.1.
security = user
server string = "goddamit"
workgroup = mydomain
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
wins support = yes
encrypt passwords = yes

[homes]
read only = no
create mode = 0600
directory mode = 0700

[public]
path = /tmp
guest ok = yes
writable = yes

[home]
path = /home/yourdir
guest ok = yes
writeable = no

######################

On the Samba server, add this to /etc/passwd:

	smbguest:x:1202:100:workstation:/dev/null:/bin/false	

and this to /etc/shadow:

	smbguest:*:9797:0:::::

then do:
	
	smbpasswd -a smbguest
	smbpasswd -a root

kill and restart 'smbd' and 'nmbd'.

From the XP box, log into the domain from System/Computer Name/change

you should get on it fine as 'root' + password.

Reboot XP, and log into the domain (use 'options' tab) as 'smbguest' + 
passwd_for_smbguest_you_chose

Voila, non?

I also undid the XP firewall in the TCP/IP section, I don't know if this 
helped me or not, but it might be crucial if the above doesn't work. Good 
luck.

-Aaron Krister Johnson




-- 
OCEAN, n.  A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made
for man -- who has no gills. -Ambrose Bierce 'The Devils Dictionary'