[Samba] BINGO - bug - 3.0.14, 3.0.21 intractable browsing problems

[ANTHONY JOSEPH MESSINA]

> Okay, folks -- we've found the cause of the problem.
>
> To recap: With our Samba server as the master browser, the domain window
> in My Network Places is totally empty, irrespective of what client we
> use (Windows 98, 2000, XP).
>
> When Samba is not the master browser (i.e., another workstation is
> acting as the master browser), hosts are visible.
>
> When Samba is the master browser, the browse.dat and wins.dat files are
> populated correctly with the hosts on the network.
>
> Our browse.dat and wins.dat files are stored in /var/cache/samba.
>
> The directory had permissions of 744. With the permission set as 744, no
> worky. With the permissions set at 755, tada -- suddenly it works. A
> whole host of problems are resolved. A permissions problem (what we
> initially suspected) but not one that was simple to devine. The browse
> connections are made by an unprivileged user, and with permissions of
> 744, that user cannot enter the directory, even if the files are readable.
>
> This is the sort of problem that a perusal of the nmbd log should have
> made immediately obvious. If Samba can't read a vital file, shouldn't it
> be reporting that in the logs? We've reproduced the problem with the log
> level set at 9; though nmbd reports that the browse.dat file is being
> written to, it never says anything about being unable to read it or
> unable to enter the cache directory. If it had, we would have taken
> three minutes to fix this problem instead of three weeks.
>
> We didn't see an error to this effect in the session logs, either.
>
> Perhaps there's something misconfigured with our logging -- but it seems
> just as likely that Samba isn't reporting a failure to read the
> browse.dat and wins.dat files to the logs.
>
> -Stephen-

stephen, i'm glad you found the answer.  i'm afraid i wasn't much help at
all now.

-anthony