Not sure why I didn't get my own posting.. Anyway, if anyone is interested I finally got to the bottom of it. As stated I am using these samba file servers as my ansible control hosts. I am running playbooks against windows VM to configure software, run windows updates configure services. I had started thinking this is a Kerberos problem, and that keys were not getting renewed automatically - it had been about a month since I had set up each server. but looked in krb5.conf and keylife was 7 days. Finally stepped away from the computer to walk the dog and it hit me I hadn't run a playbook against a windows box for over a week - . Ansible is renewing the keys. DOH. I guess I need to figure out how to handle Kerberos and keys with Samba. The document I followed to setup my Samba file server makes no mention of Kerberos, it was pretty much dumb luck I got it to work in the first place. Regards Bill