[Samba] DFS root only works for more recent Windows clients

[Steve Thompson]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2011, Bruce Richardson wrote:

> I've been testing DFS roots and I'm finding that while Vista and 2008
> Server clients can connect with no problems, Windows XP Pro and 2003
> Server clients fail.

I have also seen the same behaviour. Sometimes the links work, sometimes 
they don't. I can create two links to the same share, identical apart from 
name, and one works and one does not. For the links that work, I can do a 
Properties on the link, and there is a Security tab, and under the DFS 
tab, I see \\realserver\realshare as the destination. For the links that 
do not work, there is no Security tab and under DFS I see just 
\\dfsserver\dfsroot.

I've also noticed that if I map the final share (one that does not work 
via dfsroot) as \\dfsserver\dfsroot\share, it always works, and after 
disconnecting that mapping, \\dfsserver\share also starts working. Reboot 
the client and they don't work any more.

I using Samba 3.5.1 on CentOS 5.5 x86_64 with ldapsam. All share names and 
link names are lower case, and I am using FQDN server names. All clients 
are Windows XP SP3 32-bit. I'm not convinced that it is a Samba problem, 
though, as I've seen folks with pure Windows environments complain of the 
same thing.

Steve