[Samba] Samba Intermittent Browsing Issue from Windows 2008 R2 box

[Volker Lendecke]

On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:12:22AM +1300, Hamish McCullough wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> 
> 
> I have a really strange problem which I need some help with
> 
> 
> 
> I will give you the background
> 
> 
> 
> Samba 2.2.12 installed on Red Had Linux Advanced Server 2.1
> 
> 
> 
> Basically I have upgraded a client from a Windows 2003 TS box to a Windows
> 2008 R2 TS box. The 2003 box had approx 30 concurrent users logged on and
> could browse to samba no problems at any time.
> 
> Once I installed the Windows 2008 R2 box and got all users connecting there
> connections to the samba drive would constantly be prompted with a username
> and password box – I changed the lanmanauthentication level and this fixed
> that however the issue I am having is strange.
> 
> You can have 5-8 users connected to the 2008 r2 ts box and browse the samba
> shares fine, any more than that and randomly out of the users some will not
> work and keep getting prompted by username/password box. Only way to fix
> appears to be restart samba service which sometimes fixes the issue.
> 
> I have absolutely no idea how to fix this – I have spent weeks on this and
> have Microsoft looking into it with no luck

To be honest, I doubt you will be able to fix it with
version 2.2.12 of Samba. It *might* be that you can
configure W2K8R2 to use ancient authentication mechanisms,
but I would recommend upgrading Samba.

> Unfortunately because its running 2.1 Advanced Server I can’t run samba in
> AD mode with Kerberos as I don’t have the install cd’s so server mode is
> only possible.

"security=domain" and "winbind rpc only=yes" should be
possible anywhere.

> Should I look at upgrading Samba – if so will the latest version run on 2.1
> Advanced Server?

Latest Samba 3.5.6 should compile fine there. If it does
not, we'll be happy to fix the build breakages you find. We
don't provide binary packages, so you'll have to compile it
yourself.

Best regards,

Volker