Samba issues with XP

[pardsbane at offthehill.org (Josh Pollak)]

On Oct 14, 2004, at 2:04 PM, Josh Pollak wrote:

> Ok, this is driving me crazy...
>
> I've got a share on my Powerbook (OS X, running Samba) that I want 
> guests to be able to log in to. Setting up user names for each guest 
> on the PB isn't feasible, so I want any user who isn't recognized by 
> the system to be logged in as a guest... This seems to work fine with 
> every SMB client except Windows XP. I can't browse the Mac or see any 
> shares from XP machines, but it works fine from Win2k machines.

Nothing like replying to your own post. I finally found a reference to 
the same problem I was having on google. The solution some suggested 
was to use a utility called SharePoints, which made the problem go 
away. Yeah, um, what's the REAL FIX? So I backed up my smb.conf, 
downloaded the utility, applied the fix mentioned in the archive I saw, 
and then did a diff of the new smb.conf to the old one, and found this 
option had been added:

map to guest = Bad User

Here is the smb.conf man page on that option:

map to guest (G)

This parameter is only useful in  security modes other than security = 
share - i.e. user, server, and domain.

<snip>

Bad User - Means user  logins with an invalid password are rejected, 
unless the username does not exist, in which case it is treated as a 
guest login and mapped into the  guest account.

<snip>

Note that this parameter is needed to set up "Guest" share services 
when using security modes other than share. This is because in these 
modes the name of the resource being  requested is not sent to the 
server until after the server has successfully authenticated the client 
so the server cannot make authentication decisions at the correct time 
(connection to the share) for "Guest" shares.


Sounds reasonable. I'm not sure why I've never seen that before, or why 
its not more prominent. Anyway, samba users on all platforms might want 
to be aware of this option if you have anonymous/guest shares on your 
servers.

-Josh