Chapter 2. Compiling and installing Samba on a Unix host

Table of Contents

My client reports "cannot locate specified share name" or similar
Why are my file's timestamps off by an hour, or by a few hours?

My client reports "cannot locate specified share name" or similar

This message indicates that your client CAN locate the specified server, which is a good start, but that it cannot find a service of the name you gave. @@ -58,68 +7,7 @@ The first step is to check the exact name of the service you are trying to connect to (consult your system administrator). Assuming it exists and you specified it correctly (read your client's docs on how to specify a service name correctly), read on: -

Many clients cannot accept or use service names longer than eight characters.

Many clients cannot accept or use service names containing spaces.

Some servers (not Samba though) are case sensitive with service names.

Some clients force service names into upper case.

Printing doesn't work

-Make sure that the specified print command for the service you are -connecting to is correct and that it has a fully-qualified path (eg., -use "/usr/bin/lpr" rather than just "lpr"). -

-Make sure that the spool directory specified for the service is -writable by the user connected to the service. In particular the user -"nobody" often has problems with printing, even if it worked with an -earlier version of Samba. Try creating another guest user other than -"nobody". -

-Make sure that the user specified in the service is permitted to use -the printer. -

-Check the debug log produced by smbd. Search for the printer name and -see if the log turns up any clues. Note that error messages to do with -a service ipc$ are meaningless - they relate to the way the client -attempts to retrieve status information when using the LANMAN1 -protocol. -

-If using WfWg then you need to set the default protocol to TCP/IP, not -Netbeui. This is a WfWg bug. -

-If using the Lanman1 protocol (the default) then try switching to -coreplus. Also not that print status error messages don't mean -printing won't work. The print status is received by a different -mechanism. -

My client reports "This server is not configured to list shared resources"

-Your guest account is probably invalid for some reason. Samba uses the -guest account for browsing in smbd. Check that your guest account is -valid. -

See also 'guest account' in smb.conf man page.

Log message "you appear to have a trapdoor uid system"

-This can have several causes. It might be because you are using a uid -or gid of 65535 or -1. This is a VERY bad idea, and is a big security -hole. Check carefully in your /etc/passwd file and make sure that no -user has uid 65535 or -1. Especially check the "nobody" user, as many -broken systems are shipped with nobody setup with a uid of 65535. -

It might also mean that your OS has a trapdoor uid/gid system :-)

-This means that once a process changes effective uid from root to -another user it can't go back to root. Unfortunately Samba relies on -being able to change effective uid from root to non-root and back -again to implement its security policy. If your OS has a trapdoor uid -system this won't work, and several things in Samba may break. Less -things will break if you use user or server level security instead of -the default share level security, but you may still strike -problems. -

-The problems don't give rise to any security holes, so don't panic, -but it does mean some of Samba's capabilities will be unavailable. -In particular you will not be able to connect to the Samba server as -two different uids at once. This may happen if you try to print as a -"guest" while accessing a share as a normal user. It may also affect -your ability to list the available shares as this is normally done as -the guest user. -

-Complain to your OS vendor and ask them to fix their system. -

-Note: the reason why 65535 is a VERY bad choice of uid and gid is that -it casts to -1 as a uid, and the setreuid() system call ignores (with -no error) uid changes to -1. This means any daemon attempting to run -as uid 65535 will actually run as root. This is not good! -

Why are my file's timestamps off by an hour, or by a few hours?

Many clients cannot accept or use service names longer than eight characters.

Many clients cannot accept or use service names containing spaces.

Some servers (not Samba though) are case sensitive with service names.

Some clients force service names into upper case.

Why are my file's timestamps off by an hour, or by a few hours?

This is from Paul Eggert eggert@twinsun.com.

Most likely it's a problem with your time zone settings. @@ -173,22 +61,4 @@ time zone is also set appropriately. [[I don't know how to do this.]] Samba traditionally has had many problems dealing with time zones, due to the bizarre ways that Microsoft network protocols handle time zones. -

How do I set the printer driver name correctly?

Question: -“ On NT, I opened "Printer Manager" and "Connect to Printer". - Enter ["\\ptdi270\ps1"] in the box of printer. I got the - following error message - ”

-     You do not have sufficient access to your machine
-     to connect to the selected printer, since a driver
-     needs to be installed locally.
-

Answer:

In the more recent versions of Samba you can now set the "printer -driver" in smb.conf. This tells the client what driver to use. For -example:

-     printer driver = HP LaserJet 4L
-

With this, NT knows to use the right driver. You have to get this string -exactly right.

To find the exact string to use, you need to get to the dialog box in -your client where you select which printer driver to install. The -correct strings for all the different printers are shown in a listbox -in that dialog box.

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