samba - Aug 2006 - Losing access to drive within XP

This sounds more like an Windows problem, but it is an interaction with
Samba and I'm hoping someone has an idea of where to start looking.

3 times in the past week I've had a user (different user each time) come to
me saying their P: drive is inaccessible, access denied. The P: drive is set
in the user's Active Directory Profile as their home directory
\\sambaserver\home$\%username%

If I have them access their home directory using a UNC through explorer, it
works fine. I can either have them unmap and remap P: or logout and log back
in again, and everything is fine. So, clearly, the Samba server is accepting
their credentials. But something is happening between Windows 2000 and the
Samba server causing Windows to get confused. Up until 3 weeks ago, we were
using a Windows 2000 file server, so Samba is the only new introduction. I'm
dedicated to getting this Samba solution to work, despite the crappy support
by BackupExec that I'm finding with my backups, but this is something
I'd
like to nip in the bud, if I can.

I'm running 3.0.20b on SuSE 10.0. I'm using the Suse rpms, except I
rebuilt
them to include the idmap_rid support. Here's my smb.conf

[global]
        unix charset = LOCALE
        workgroup = MYDOM
        realm = MYDOM.INT
        server string = Production File Server 03
        security = ADS
        allow trusted domains = No
        enable privileges = Yes
        username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
        log level = 1
        log file = /var/log/samba/%m
        max log size = 50
        deadtime = 15
        socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192
SO_SNDBUF=8192
        printcap name = cups
        wins server = 10.0.0.2
        ldap ssl = no
        idmap backend = idmap_rid:MYDOM=10000-50000
        idmap uid = 10000-50000
        idmap gid = 10000-50000
        template shell = /bin/bash
        winbind separator = +
        cups options = raw

[Home$]
        path = /srv/private/home
        valid users = "@MYDOM+Domain Users"
        admin users = "@MYDOM+Domain Admins"
        read only = No
        create mask = 0660
        directory mask = 0770
        dos filemode = Yes


Thanks
Steve

Steven Cardinal wrote:
> This sounds more like an Windows problem, but it is an interaction with
> Samba and I'm hoping someone has an idea of where to start looking.
>
> 3 times in the past week I've had a user (different user each time) 
> come to
> me saying their P: drive is inaccessible, access denied. The P: drive 
> is set
> in the user's Active Directory Profile as their home directory
> \\sambaserver\home$\%username%
>
> If I have them access their home directory using a UNC through 
> explorer, it
> works fine. I can either have them unmap and remap P: or logout and 
> log back
> in again, and everything is fine. So, clearly, the Samba server is 
> accepting
> their credentials. But something is happening between Windows 2000 and 
> the
> Samba server causing Windows to get confused. Up until 3 weeks ago, we 
> were
> using a Windows 2000 file server, so Samba is the only new 
> introduction. I'm
> dedicated to getting this Samba solution to work, despite the crappy 
> support
> by BackupExec that I'm finding with my backups, but this is something
I'd
> like to nip in the bud, if I can.
>
> I'm running 3.0.20b on SuSE 10.0. I'm using the Suse rpms, except I
> rebuilt
> them to include the idmap_rid support. Here's my smb.conf
I'm not an expert at this, but I'd say your configuration is NOT the 
problem. Clearly, you are connecting. What is happening is an 
intermittent error so you need to generate some logs. Change the log 
level to something higher - say around 10 - and restart Samba. Next time 
a user loses contact, check the logs to see if there is anything reported.