[Samba] Possible Samba 2.2.8a Issue?

[Greg Kujawa]

I am (unfortunately) still employing an NT 4.0 single domain for my
company's network. There is a single Samba 2.2.8a FreeBSD host I have on the
network. It's been active for the past year or so. Everything runs smoothly,
but I run into issues every so often that seem kind of odd. And the root
cause appears to involve the Samba host. Here's a quick rundown:

o The Samba box isn't configured to act as a master browser.
o The Samba box uses 'security = server' in its config.
o The 'password server = ' portion of the config is pointing to the NT 4.0PDC.
o Every month or so all of the BDC's will shut down their Computer Browser
services after being unable to pull backup browse lists from the PDC.
o The PDC has network connectivity and is accessible from the various BDC's
and other hosts.
o I remedy things by stopping and restarting the Samba services on the
FreeBSD box. After I do so all of the BDC's are once again able to pull
backup browse lists from the PDC. This is the only measure that corrects the
situation, other than restarting the PDC (last resort).

Checking the logs pertaining to contacting the PDC from the Samba box I see
messages such as:

[2006/08/16 07:44:56, 0] smbd/password.c:server_cryptkey(1055)
  password server not available

Any ideas if this is a known quirk. The password server is definitely
available. And if I just restart Samba on the FreeBSD host then everything
corrects itself. I googled around a bit and didn't see anything off the bat
that looked similar to what I am experiencing...