Samba share - currently not working

Linux and Unix-Like Red Hat
1

Long running samba share. Never have any problems,

Suddenly started asking windows users for password - which doesnt work. Tried to manually reset smb password and manually map - still wrong password.

Restart samba?

2

So, my car isn't driving today. Can you fix it without seeing it? Could it be out of fuel, flat battery or I've lost the keys? Actually I'm double-parked and blocked in but you wouldn't know it from my problem description.

Perhaps you can help us a little? Can you share (in CODE tags) the content of smb.conf file or whatever it refers to? That might give us a start.

  • Perhaps your account has expired.
  • Perhaps you've lost connection to an external authentication (e.g. Active Directory)
  • Perhaps there was an expiry date on the share.

Robin

1 Like
3

As Robin says, we need more information.

As far as the Samba password setup it typically goes like this:

  1. Usually, the MS admin creates a share (hidden or visible) with the Unix users username and password. Then the Unix/Linux user simply logs in and his password is transmitted to the MSbox to access the share.
  2. The Unix admin installs an SMB client and declares (adds) the specific Unix user as an SMB user.
  3. At this point you would expect a connection to the MS share to work BUT IT Doesn't. The reason is that the SMB password to be transmitted to the MSbox has to be hashed in (typically) '/var/smb/smbpasswd' but when you look in there, that users hashed record is not there. However, now the Unix box is aware that the user is an SMB client user, if the sysadmin (or the user themselves) resets that user's password with the 'passwd' command (even if it's set to what is was already), the hash will be put in '/var/smb/smbpasswd' file. It miraculously appears. Until that hash is in the smbpasswd file there isn't a hope in hell of it working.

So on your Linux box find your 'smbpasswd' file and look in there to see that a hash for that user exists. If it doesn't you need to set/reset that users password, and if it does, confirm whether that users password is what the Samba server is expecting.

1 Like