Common error resolution during Samba connection

Samba enables Linux servers to be part of a Windows domain, or to allow Windows clients to access Linux servers through their network Places. However, Windows and Linux are, after all, two different operating system platforms. Even though the Samba server provides a platform for communication between the two sides, there are still some problems during the online process. I'll explain some of these common problems today and provide some solutions. Hopefully, this will help your system administrator solve the problems that they encounter in their daily work.

One, XP client can log in, 2000 client is not OK.

When I first started using the Samba server, I encountered a strange problem. At that time the Enterprise Client is not fully unified, there are 2000 clients and XP clients. When you deploy Samba applications, you find a strange problem that only XP clients can access the Linux server through their network neighbors, while other customer segments are not. After a series of measures, I finally found the problem.

This is mainly because the Windows operating system differs from the Linux operating system in the handling mechanism of passwords. The current mainstream Windows operating systems are already using encrypted methods to send passwords. On the Samba server, the system administrator can decide whether to specify that the user password must be sent in encrypted form to the Samba server, using the Encrypt passwords option. If this option is set to No, all Windows clients will not be able to log on to the Linux server. To this end, the author sets this option to Yes, that is, the specified user password must be sent in an encrypted form to the Samba server. All Windows clients can then log on to the Linux system server as normal.

So why is it that only XP clients can log in before, and 2000 clients can't log in? After finding the relevant data and testing it, it is found that if you set the above option to no, you must modify the client's configuration to implement it. If you need to copy a file from the Samba server package to the client. Only then will Windows clients be able to connect properly to the Linux server without enabling encrypt passwords.

As shown in the figure above, there is a registry folder under the Samba installation directory. This file is stored with some password processing files. If you set the option encrypt passwords to No, you will need to copy these files to the corresponding Windows client, otherwise you will not be able to log in properly. The author Win2000 This registry file to 2000 clients, and double-click the registry value directly into the registry. After restarting the client, the 2000 system will have a smooth access to the Linux server.

For this reason I think it is better to set the Encrypt passwords option to Yes in most cases. You can set this option to No if you have special needs, such as for access control needs. These registry files are then copied to the corresponding client to ensure that the client segment that needs to be accessed is properly connected to the Linux server.

Second, uppercase passwords are not supported.

In order to secure the resources on the Linux server, it is necessary to set a password for the connection. But while I was deploying the Samba server, I found a very strange problem. It turns out that all uppercase passwords are not supported when setting access passwords for Samba servers. In other words, if the password is all uppercase abcdef The Linux server is not recognized, but ABCDEF is approved. What is the reason?

In the Windows operating system, although it is sensitive to the case of passwords, there is no limit to the number of uppercase characters in the password. But the samba server is different. In the Samba server, there is a parameter password level. Let us not misunderstand that this is an option to set the password security level, but it is not. This option is primarily used to set the number of characters that the Samba server allows for uppercase passwords. If you set this parameter to 3, only three uppercase characters are allowed in the password setting. If the password is six, all uppercase characters, the Samba server will not accept the password. Obviously this is a rather bad design. Because there is no such restriction in the Windows client, and the Samba server has this limitation, it is easy to cause incompatibility between them. If enterprise users prefer to use uppercase characters as passwords, you need to change this parameter. If the system administrator stipulates that the maximum length of the password is 8 bits, then the value of this option needs to be set to 8.