Hi all, I am a bit of a newbie to Linux but I am getting there slowly Any help you can give with the following problem would be gratefully received.

I have a small home network with a few systems ranging from Linux to XP (mostly Linux) and I have just put in a Samba server to make accessing my data so much easier across the board. The server has been in for about 2weeks now and I have had no problems until very recently. I have had a hardware issue with my main system Linux, which has forced me to use my XP system a great deal more, and I had been working and connecting to samba with no problems for a few days……………….. Until a day or so ago.

I tried powering on my samba server as normal (I keep all systems powered off when not in use) and also powered up the xp system and I could see my server as normal and all shares etc etc but I couldn't connect. I double click the share XP asks me for my username and password but the connection still fails… Did a few tests and found the only solution to be stopping the samba server and re adding my samba user with smbpasswd –a “username” then restarting the samba service. – Connect from XP and all works fine again.. This has now happened more than once, does anyone have any idea’s why this is happening?

My set-up is as simple as it can possibly at present 1user on the server (other than root) and 1 samba user (same as the non root login) and only 3shares and 1 printer. Nothing else in the default smb.conf has changed other than the server identification strings and the server name.

Thanks in advance for any help and or ideas
Sm1ler

Hi again all - Just trying to shed a little more light on this issue so hopefully someone can assist,

Ok now this has me really confused… I am not sure if the problem sits with samba or XP and at present I have no other systems I can test with, short of booting my xp system with mandrake move that is, and I will need some space & time to sit and play with that!!!!

Last night I changed my smb.conf to unhash the netbios name settings and I refreshed my workgroup in XP and that did the trick… Then I rebooted the xp system later in the evening and the problem returned (samba was working prior to the reboot and was not taken offline all night), I can see the samba server and the shares but the system will not take the username and password. – I took my xp system out of the workgroup and readded it refreshed the workgroup and was still unable to connect… Then I turned to samba and changed the password on my smbpasswd and restarted samba then refreshed the workgroup in XP and once again was able to connect to my shares… I just don’t understand where the problem is sitting… Any idea’s anyone?? I have just migrated all my data to this server and I really don't want to rebuild it anytime soon.

Regards
Sm1ler

Hi everyone,

Sorry to keep bothering you all with this one but I am really stuck!!!

I can’t see any problems with my smb.conf as I have it as simple as I can. 3x shares, workgroup name and netbios name have been specified. I have changed the hostname of the linux box to match in /etc/hostname /etc/hosts and in the smb.conf - could it be making a difference that the hostname is 10 characters long? This wasn’t an issue when I first set things up!!

I now have ssh installed and this works a treat everytime with no issues like those I have described above. I can login using ssh with the system ip or hostname every time with no issues it’s only ever a problem when I try to connect from xp to my samba shares. The fix is the same process every time:-

login to the linux box, su to root, stop samba, smbpasswd –a “username” , start samba, double click workgroup icon in XP to refresh and re-enter the workgroup from the top level navigate to the samba server, double click the share, login using Linux/Smb username and password. - Although this process takes only a few min’s I am sure this is something I shouldn’t need to do each time I want to access my data.

Any thoughts or tests on things I could try would be very helpful.

Or any idea’s on removing samba and re-adding it? I am using the standard version that comes with Mandrake 9.1, maybe I should look at removing it and installing the newer version?

Regards
Sm1ler

Hello again all

Further to my last post I have now found that if I start my Samba server after my xp box, it works fine first time every time.... is this something to do with Samba not re announcing itself on my network often enough? Maybe something to do with the browser service? If I restart XP after I have my Samba server up and running I can’t logon to my shares until I start and stop the samba services and re-add my user account in the smbpasswd. Any thoughts or things I can try to fix this would be very helpful. Thanks in advance
Sm1ler