changes in system-config-samba do not affect nmbd

[koanhead]

Using system-config-samba to change the Workgroup name does not affect the Workgroup name displayed on remote computers. Tested on remote WinXP and remote Debian Wheezy.

According to the help page for system-config-samba:
"After clicking OK, the changes are written to the configuration file and the daemon is restarted; thus, the changes take effect immediately."
In fact the changes never take effect at all.
Changing the workgroup name manually in /etc/smbd.conf and then restarting smbd (once with service smbd restart and then with service smbd stop followed by service smbd start) has no effect on the workgroup displayed on remote computers.

Thus it is IMPOSSIBLE to change the server's workgroup.

It is also impossible to create a globally readable read-only share. I have been trying for three years to do this in Ubuntu and it has NEVER WORKED.

The response of the server to clients' connection attempts are apparently random, regardless of server settings. Sometimes the attempt gives an auth dialog, but refuses any password. Sometimes it fails silently. Sometimes it gives a permissions error such as "$SHARE is not accessible. You may not have permissions to access this volume.
The network path was not found."
on WinXP or
"Unable to mount location
Failed to mount Windows share."
on Debian or Ubuntu. This last error message, by the way, is utterly useless. If there is no indication of why the error arose then the message is no good for debugging and the process might just as well fail silently.

These things make Samba effectively unable to serve a read-only globally readable share. Sometimes user-level auth works, but not reliably- and if I want user-level access I'd use sshfs anyway. When user-level auth fails it gives the same cryptic error message as above.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: samba 2:3.5.8~dfsg-1ubuntu2.5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-15.65-generic 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-15-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
BothFailedConnect: Yes
CheckboxSubmission: 71dcdffc611aa0b506f8503de91b9e83
CheckboxSystem: edda5d4f616ca792bf437989cb597002
Date: Fri Aug 17 10:44:28 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
NmbdLog:

ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SambaServerRegression: No
SmbConfIncluded: Yes
SmbLog:

SourcePackage: samba
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2012-02-19 (179 days ago)

[Clint Byrum (clint-fewbar)]

Hello koanhead, thank you for taking the time to file a bug report and help make Ubuntu better!

The workgroup name is not handled by smbd, but by nmbd. So in order to enact changes in it, you must restart the nmbd service. There is, in fact, a bug in system-config-samba, because it does this to detect if samba is a service:

    def nmbIsService (self):
        # Check if nmb is its own service
        s = os.system ('/sbin/chkconfig --list nmb >& /dev/null')
        if s == 0:
            return True
        else:
            return False

This will fail on Ubuntu because chkconfig does not exist. Thus, changes which affect nmbd will not be picked up in system-config-samba. I'll open a task against that package for that fix. For samba, everything is working correctly (I just verified this), you just have to restart nmbd with

sudo service nmbd restart

As to your other question, I have no problem setting up a globally readable guest-capable read-only share in smb.conf like this:

[readall]
 path = /mnt/readall
 guest ok = Yes
 locking = No

[koanhead (googoleyes)]

OK, I can verify that the change to the workgroup setting is now in effect. As far as I can tell this is a result of restarting nmbd (I didn't restart it explicitly but as a consequence of booting the machine.)

I'm glad to hear that samba works correctly for you. Unfortunately it does not work reliably for a great many others, which makes me question its suitability as Ubuntu's default file-sharing mechanism.

Thanks for your help!