[Samba] Authentication delays in Samaba 3.0.10

[Vincent Stoffer]

Hello,

We have recently upgraded to samba 3.0.10 (RedHat 7.3) and are now
having authentication delays with some of our shares.  We are using
unencrypted passwords so we can use the pam system-auth...we have the
plaintext registry patch on all windows machines that are connecting.
The problem is that if you manually connect or browse to a share from a
windows box (2k or XP), the client sends your logged in windows username
with an empty password (saw this from a packet trace)...samba correctly
fails the "bad" password:

smb_pam_passcheck: PAM: smb_pam_auth failed - Rejecting User vince !
[2005/01/24 12:08:28, 0] auth/pampass.c:smb_pam_passcheck(810)

and this happens about 10 times before the client puts up the windows
user/pass dialog to prompt for authentication.  When you enter your
username and password, _everything works correctly_...authentication
succeeds and the share is mounted properly.

Unfortunately the 20-30 second delay before the authentication dialog
pops up is causing some concern among our users.  This behavior seems to
have changed from our samba 2.2 installation where the dialog would pop
up very quickly.  If the share allows anonymous access there is no delay
and it mounts instantly.

Any ideas why the client/server interaction might have changed to cause
this longer delay and what if anything we might be able to do?  (Yes
we are working on moving towards encrypted passwords but that can't
happen for us right now.)

Thank you,

Vince Stoffer
Network Administrator, Reed College