[Samba] netbios name

David TAILLANDIER david.taillandier at domainename.com
Thu Aug 12 06:42:42 MDT 2010


I discovered a strange behaviour (bug ?) with Samba and Windows 
explorer.exe.
I explain it here in the hope it will be usefull to others.

Tested with:
    Samba 3.2.5 from Debian Lenny
    Windows XP Pro and Windows 2003 into a workgroup

If we disable netbios daemon *and* we set a netbios name (every other 
parameters left unchanged from orginal file):
    netbios name = "whatever"
    disable netbios = yes
then we get this:
- from smbclient, everything is OK
- from the Windows commande line, everything is ok
   example: net use H: \\mysambaserver\myshare /user:sambauser
- from the Windows GUI (explorer.exe) it is impossible to access to
   Samba shares

1 - logon to your Windows box with user "windowsuser"
2 - open explorer
3 - type \\mysambaserver in the address bar
4 - Windows asks for a username and password
5 - type "sambauser" then the password
6 - an error message states about the fact you taped a wrong password
     or the ressource is not reachable

I digged into the detailled logs and found explorer don't send the 
correct username "sambauser". It only send "windowsuser".
If we have the same username *and* password on your Windows box and on 
Samba, we don't see the problem.

Removing "netbios name" solve the problem.




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