[Samba] Username Case Sensitivity vs. Lower Casing

[Marcel Ziswiler]

Hi there

The Release Notes for Samba 3.0.8 from Nov 7, 2004 stated the following:

===========================
Change in Winbindd Behavior
===========================

All usernames returned by winbindd are now converted to lower
case for better consistency.  This means any winbind installation
relying on the winbind username will need to rename existing
directories and/or files based on the username (%u and %U) to lower
case (e.g. mv $name `echo $name | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`).  This may
include mail spool files, home directories, valid user lines in
smb.conf, etc....

I do remember that when we upgraded from 3.0.7 to 3.0.8 back in November last 
year we had to rename all our existing directories and stuff as noted above. Now 
a couple months later our MIS department upgraded our Windows 2003 Server Domain 
Controllers to Service Pack 1 and we started experiencing incompatibilities with 
winbind. Looking at the latest Release Notes for Samba 3.0.20 from Aug 19, 2005 
told me the following:

Common bugs fixed in 3.0.14a include:

   o Compatibility issues between Winbind and Windows 2003 SP1
     domain controllers (*2k3sp1*).

So I upgraded to latest Samba 3.0.20 and indeed the compatibility issues with 
2k3sp1 went away, but another thing I noticed is that winbind seems to have 
reverted back to pre 3.0.8 case sensitive username behavior. I had to rename all 
the directories and stuff again. Unfortunately now if somebody logs in using a 
lower case username it half way lets him log on, but then gdm hangs. The only 
way to successfully log on now is by exactly using the casing on the username as 
originally specified in the Windows Domain.

Is this expected behavior? Why did you guys decide to change the username casing 
behavior again? Is there an easy way out (e.g. to avoid having to rename all the 
directories and stuff again and more importantly to avoid hanged logons if not 
using the exact casing on the username)?

Any help is very much appreciated.

Cheers

Marcel


--
Marcel Ziswiler			mailto:marcel at ziswiler.com
Schuelmatt 7			http://www.ziswiler.net
CH-6018 Buttisholz		mobile: +41 (76) 338-0382
Switzerland			phone: +41 (41) 928-0509