Not able to mount CIFS shares due to password compatibility

p_s_shah · 06-13-2014, 10:35 AM

On AIX 6.1 system, we are not able to mount a CIFS share. CIFS share is mounted from a NAS device, which do not support plain text password communication.

As checked with NAS vendor, AIX sends password using netbios protocol and plain text. NAS device can be enable for netbios protocol (security risk), but there is no way it can accept plain text communication.

Any way, we can ask AIX to send password in unicode forcefully ?

Let me know if any further input is required.

dijetlo · 06-15-2014, 06:12 AM

Quote:

CIFS Password Encryption Protocols
When the AIX® Fast Connect server is configured for encrypted passwords (and not for NT-Passthrough authentication), incoming SMB user name/encrypted_password logins are validated by AIX® Fast Connect against the /etc/cifs/cifsPasswd file, which is a database of AIX® Fast Connect users (and their encrypted passwords). The /etc/cifs/cifsPasswd file is initialized and maintained by the net user command (see Configuring Encrypted Passwords).
To enforce encrypted passwords for AIX® Fast Connect, type the following:

net config /encrypt_passwords:2

IBM is suggesting it can be configured for encrypted password.

NevemTeve · 06-17-2014, 12:12 AM

(Off: I've never known that AIX could mount partitions via SMB, but I did use Samba!smbclient in Aix (compiled from source) to access data via SMB)

p_s_shah · 06-17-2014, 10:21 AM

Thanks to both of you for replying.

dijetlo,
The provided link didn't work. But, I went through the article mentioned by you for AIX Fast connect server.
The command net /????? works for Windows, not for AIX as per my understanding. I am not able to fine /etc/cifs* files.
Update: Again on further checking, I found that Fast connect is for making Unix shares visible to Windows system. My requirement is to mount Windows/NAS CIFS share on Unix.

Queries:
Do I need to install any additional packages? Currently I have bos.cifs packages only.
Is this solution applicable to AIX 6.1?

NevemTeve,
Can you please let me know which version of Samba you have compiled for AIX 6.1?
Also, issue is with mounting CIFS share where password need to be passed in unicode format. Did you have similar setup?

Regards,
Pratik Shah

NevemTeve · 06-17-2014, 11:16 AM

Code:

$ smbclient -V
Version 3.6.22

Sadly, I don't know if it is unicode or no (nor am I using non-ASCII characters in passwords)

wingnut64 · 06-20-2014, 12:46 PM

I'm mounting CIFS filesystems on AIX 6.1 using just the bos.cifs_fs fileset. The login credentials get stored in a file under /etc/cifs_fs by the mkcifscred command, which doesn't seem to indicate one way or another if it supports unicode. However a mkcifsmnt wrapper script for it has this coded up top:

Code:

MAXSHARELEN=80
MAXSERVERLEN=255
MAXWRKGRPLEN=128
MAXUSERLEN=20
MAXPASSLEN=14

So I kind of doubt it would support unicode if it can't even handle more than 14 ASCII characters...

p_s_shah · 06-23-2014, 05:15 AM

Thanks again for replies.

As of now, still no success in forcing AIX to send password in Unicode strings and Encrypted.
We are trying to convince application team to consider below options:
1. Creating a Samba share on AIX and making it visible to windows clients.
2. Creating a Windows share, which supports plain text authentications and making visible to AIX server.

I believe, both will work out. But, application team is persistent to get current functionality working, for an another share configured in similar way.

So, any suggestions are welcome to make it work.

Thanks & Regards,
Pratik Shah

NevemTeve · 06-24-2014, 06:52 AM

I still suggest testing it with smbclient. You can download binary packages from here:
http://www.perzl.org/aix/index.php?n=Main.Samba

Yordan · 07-23-2014, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NevemTeve

(Off: I've never known that AIX could mount partitions via SMB

Yes, it werks, it's very useful if you have some files on your PC running Microsft Windows and you want these files to be manipulated by some AIX scripts.
Concerning the CIFS things, remember that most of filers cand handle NFS filesystems, the same folders on the filer can be simultaneously mounted as CIFS filesystems by Windows computers, and mounted as NFS by AIX computes.