I have a puzzler for all the samba experts out there. I upgraded to 3.0.5
from samba 3.0.4. I just noticed troubles mounting smb shares. I'm not sure
if this happened with the 3.0.5 update or when I installed 3.0.4 since it's
been some time since I've tried to mount a smb share. Anyway, here is the
symptom:

# mount -t smbfs -o username=administrator //w3ksvr/g$ /mnt/hd
Password
# ls /mnt
/usr/bin/ls: /mnt/hd: Permission denied
cdrom/ floppy/ music/ pendrive/ winxp/
#

Notice how it won't even let me see the /mnt/hd directory. Before I mount the
share I can see it just fine like so:

drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jun 22 17:33 cdrom/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 Mar 16 2002 floppy/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 Mar 16 2002 hd/
drwxr-xr-x 4 rignes users 16384 Dec 31 1969 music/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 Apr 14 21:28 pendrive/
dr-xr-xr-x 1 rignes users 12288 Jul 27 00:51 winxp/

I've tried chmod 777 on /mnt/hd. I've also tried mounting it with umask, uid,
and gid options (with appropriate values).

If I uninstall samba 3.0.5 and install samba 2.2.8 from slackware 9.1 I can
mount the share fine with the mount command mentioned above. Also, thinking
that there was something strange with the 3.0.5 package I downloaded the latest
samba source and compiled it myself. Still, I get that strange Permission
denied error.

Now, one simple solution would be to just use 2.2.8, which I may do anyway.
But then I'll always be curious about what is different about 3.0.5. Besides,
knowing the answer my prove useful sometime in the future.

I've googled around but haven't managed to locate something that looks useful.

I'll keep trying while I await all your thoughts.
.
Even a hint in the right direction would be wonderful.

Thanks,

Brian

Perhaps its because its an administrative share on the windows machine?
The mount command is correct - you may try to put the password on the command line as well by putting the -o username=administrator,password=whatever //host/share /localdir

you may try creating another share on the windows server with specific permissions addition to the administrative $ share.

I figured it out. It seems that with samba 3.x.x it handles smb signing differntly than older versions. In Windows 2003 there are two options, one is to always sign smb traffic and reject all who don't know how, and the other is to sign smb traffic for clients that can, but not for those who can't. For older versions of samba it was ok for me to turn off the always sign option in active directory on Win2003 and it was happy. But, in samba 3.x.x I must turn off both. Essentially totally turning off smb signing for all my clients, even the windows ones that can sign smb.

I'm guessing samba it saying that it can use smb signing when it really can't thus causing my permission denied problem.

The next quesiton then is if there is a smb.conf directive that will turn off smb signing on the samba side and let me turn on smb signing for the rest of the network.

I'll man smb.conf when I'm more awake.

Brian

Thanks a bunch!

I have been having the exact same issue, and this workaround is what I needed!

It would be nice if Samba would fix this for security purposes.

We had this issue on sever flavors of Linux as a FYI (Gentoo, Fedora 1 &2). So it is for sure Samba and Windows 2003 Secure Communication having problems.

-=Tyr