samba 3.0.24 on feisty is broken - msdfs proxy option broken

Downgrading samba, samba-common, smbclient and libsmbclient to Edgy's 3.0.22-1ubuntu4.1 resolves the problem.

A fresh install and some debugging revealed the following:

The samba share gets broken after the 'advanced' interface in konqueror's directory sharing properties has been used, and the reason is it adds:
case sensitive = no
strict locking = no
msdfs proxy = no
and a slash to the end of the path of the share.

It turns out the "msdfs proxy = no" is the culprit. When removed, the sharing is flawless again.

In my humble opinion, this is going to hurt Feisty and Ubuntu a lot if not fixed before release!

Regards,
Martin

Thanks for your bug report.

Since feisty is released now. Have you been able to test if your problem is still current?

If not I would like to close this report.

If it is still current, is this the same problem as 90950?

Thanks

Yes, the bug is still in the released version and it's even worse: it doesn't matter what "msdfs proxy" is set to (yes/no), as long as the variable is present, the problems persists. Only commenting out the line resolves the problem. I can reproduce the gui's behaviour every time I go into the "more samba options" of Konqueror's file sharing interface (folder right-click, options, share, configure file sharing (enter root pwd), add or choose share & edit, more samba options, change something and change it back, ok, ok, ok, ok).

Now do a smbclient //localhost/[SHARE] and see the bug.

cat /etc/samba/smb.conf and see "msdfs proxy = no" added to the [SHARE] that was edited.
Remove the line "msdfs proxy = no" from this [SHARE], restart samba and retry the smbclient connection, it will succeed now.
The localhost connection is just to prove the problem, it is the same when connecting from another (edgy) machine.

So the title of this bug should read: samba OR KDE's samba gui is boken in feisty 7.04

I don't know if this is the same problem as in 90950, there is no windows machine nor any other machine involved in my (test) setup.

I don't know if it is just the gui. I copied my edgy smb.conf over to feisty without touching the gui and had the same problem.
commenting out the msdfs line did the trick though.

I think it indeed is the same problem an in 90950: The samba share cannot be accessed from a windows machine either. (Checked from a virtual machine.)

But I'm unsure if it is really samba that were to be blamed: The smb.comf manpage (http://de.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/smb.conf.5.html) shows no option "no/yes" for "msdfs proxy" at all. Samba would not be held responsible for interpreting a misconfigured smb.conf! (Where it might be helpful to have samba check for non-standard complying settings and to skip them by default.)

However, some yet unknown package seems to set "msdfs proxy = no" for every share when automatically upgrading from Egdy to Feisty. Thus, it might be no samba error (no misimplementation of the samba standard) but this unknown third part package causing the samba server to fail.

Why I would judge this to be rather critical is the fact that this error only becomes visible after automatic upgrade to Feisty on server systems, while the vast majority of Feisty beta testers (for obvious reasons) will have done testing on clients!

I had this problem as well. Commenting out the instances of "msdfs proxy = no" worked for me. Thanks!

fbusse, the package is not unknown. At least I can prove that Konqueror (but probably also kcontrol's) samba GUI adds this option.
And yes I agree that samba should gracefully ignore misconfigurations in smb.conf. My point is that Feisty is a collection of tools that should work together well when released or shortly after. Of course I know how to edit smb.conf by hand, but the majority of the users are going to use the GUI, a part of them the advanced GUI, and that will render their samba shares useless unless they google and find this bug.

This bug definitely is not related to samba configuration by some GUI, only: I did not use any samba GUI, just upgraded from Edgy to Feisty and got that "msdfs proxy = no" line in my smb.conf!

Have you ever used the GUI in Edgy? Are you sure the msdfs line was not in your Edgy configuration before upgrade?
Edgy's samba 3.0.22 not susceptible to this "msdfs proxy" bug. I know for sure, because it is in my smb.conf as well and I have a working samba on my Edgy laptop here.

That line was in my edgy smb.conf. but it worked there. In feisty i had to uncomment it (thanks guys) but to get RW permissions i had to unmount all shares, reboot, remount all shares wth RW and reboot. This is not Samba, but something else. I did a fresh install on a virgin partiton with a new user in /home.

I cannot confirm not having had this line before the upgrade (because I have no backup from the Edgy files). The information that the line only came with Feisty was a hint from a previous discussion after I noted (from the file date) that something obviously had touched the smb.conf during the upgrade. But I'm sure that the bug - i. e. failure to provide the samba share - only came with the upgrade.

I can definitely confirm, that
msdfs proxy = no
ALREADY WAS in my smb.conf before (I have incr. backups for 6 months). So the new samba server does not seem to like it. I never heard of this option before and google for "msdfs proxy samba" does not come up with helpful stuff.

I can duplicate where running the GUI config tools for SAMBA creates "msdfs proxy = no". If I manually comment the line and restart the server, I still can't connect. The Samba client doesn't work either. I had both the client and server running smoothly on Edgy.

I'd like to know how this kind of problem made past beta and into the release of Kubuntu...and how many weeks has it been since the release with this problem STILL URESOLVED?!?! I know we're talking about open source software here but I've installed 2 previous versions of Kubuntu and never saw such a serious problem. What businesses, or what individuals for that matter, would want to use a distro that can't connect to other computers in the network? F*ing ridiculous!!!! I have a few friends who I've already told to hold off on this distro because this issue really makes it THE SUCK. A message to tech support: tell the developers to get off their F*ing asses and prioritize this issue.

Lithium: Thanks for your comments. I can understand your frustration, but you can be assured that everybody here tries very hard to participate in building a stable high-quality distribution. You are invited to make suggestion how to fix this bug or provide solutions for it if you like. In any case to maintain a respectful atmosphere, please follow the code of conduct. <http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct/> Bug reports are handled by humans, so please bear this in mind.

You are perfectly welcome for the comments and suggestions. The question remains. How did this get past beta? I and many others posted comments, questions and frustrations, here and on the forums (kbuntu for me) Please??
This is not as samll (we can forget about it for now, someone will solve it sometime issue.) and no I am neither a hacker nor a programer. Just a little user trying to introduce this release into a school network consisting of 850 desktops/laptops. If i can't even get it to work on my home network? How stupid does that me look? I can do it in edgy (but edgy was on the edge, feisty ws supposed to be more stable,, pclinux2007 mepis, with no hassel. After all samba has been around for a while.

So what is it? Is somebody going to adress this issue or not? instead of everyone mentiong it and nothing happens. We want to support as best we can. Read the /kubuntu/forum/feisty/network/smb/samba/etc and you will see what we mean.

I hope that I am not sounding overly negative, but all we want to do is work. The beta is over!!!!!

Trust me Fred, I am a 10-year linux user/admin. If you like to use servers (like samba) you still do not get around doing stuff in configuration files by hand and learn about it. It lies in the design of linux. But that "hassle" comes with an advantage: It's far more secure than if you just click-start a server in windows, where nobody knows, what it's doing behind the graphics...

Anyway, I'm also a little bit angry about such errors, es they always seem to happen on any new distribution release (I know fore example fedora, SuSE, Red Hat had also such evident bugs, which everyone asked, "why did they slip through testing?").
You should always wait about 3 months before applying a new distribution onto bigger networks and/or server. This bug amongst others (for example the tty bug with crapped font encoding, just press CTRL+ALT+F1 to test it) convince me once again not to upgrade my servers too quickly, even if I'm really nosy about it. Linux is NEVER out of beta (and that's o.k., as windows is too) and what works on one pc may not work on another. That's the price of freedom, platform-independence and community-driven tests. I still think it's an affordable price.

Chris

Hey chris, thanks for the message. and I agree to a point. I just know a lot of people that want to go on in life and like/love the linux/kubuntu/ubuntu, etc environement. But why, if it works in beta (or previous distro) doesn't it (the same config) work in the next one. Samba is important (albight slow to load). I have nothing against getting my keyboard (fingers) dirty configuring a file. But why do the same work twice only to find out it doesn't work because of some obscure distro orientated "new" thing that nobody but themselves understand. UUID didn't work in edgy and as far as I am concerned is even worse in feisty.

I just can't afford to spend my time adressing issues and waiting. I also have to eat. For that I have to work productively. That is why I changed to and love linux. But I have never so many issues within a week as I seen had with feisty. and they are naging. From sound to kongueror to samba to k3b to install, to grub. These are things that have been looked at and solved before.
Sure, I have no problems waiting 2-3months. But isn't that what the herd/beta phase is for? These kind of bugs should not "slip" through.

I have to agree with a few people above us here in this post: this is not good for a lot of people wanting to change systems. Not just to test but to use. Lets just hope the powers that be have an ear:)

If I didn't dislike gnome so much I would probably install that and be done with it. as it is I have to go back to edgy or pclinuxos 2007.

The question of freedom is not even disputable, I think we all agree on that.

Sorry, I don't want to rant and I wish i could be of real help I just have disicions to make.

Chris, Ubuntu has come with a claim that was new to me (I'm no primer to Linux, too) when looking on Linux, where I was used to it as Windoze user for long: Simplicity to use. Period. Not only for some freaks but for the typical user who just desperately believes he will really get what he sees. And after my first impressions of Ubuntu, I admit, I was impressed: It really was that simple. And with Edgy, I dared to recommend it for exactly this sort of persons. Now, only one release later, I'm proven wrong.

None of the freaks ever needed an automatic update service, did you? That's for those simple users around! But the most important requirement for any automatic service is stability. Nothing else but stability.

I think you are right: It really is sort of philosophy. But exactly this philosophy seems to have changed: Stability obviously is no longer the ultimate criterion for some of those who decide what to include into a "stable" release, just being too nosy about always having the latest of every single package. Even if it required a little bit of manual administration.

I agree, that I have to accept this where it is about a community driven project. But however, I think it's a pity.

Hmm... maybe Mark Shuttleworth should hire more people at launchpad to address those issues ;-) Seriously, this is my opinion. But then we end up having a SuSE like distribution (which is not bad at all, but does not have the same free-world feeling as ubuntu does atm).
It's true, as a linux-semi-pro it is easy to fix those thins. As a newbie you got no chance. But as a newbie you do not setup samba-server. In this particular example I can say, that I did not remark the bug, because I had the beta-version of feisty only on my samba-client machine. I dare installing pre-releases on my servers, as already mentioned above.

Anyway, we should stop spam this bug and discuss such stuff in the forums ;-)

Er.. right... just adding something...

I have the same problem. In Edgy, when I installed, Samba immediately saw my workgroup with just samba-common installed.. then I used the KDE gui to share my files and everything worked like a snap.

This time, it sees nothing until I install Samba, at which point it only sees Mshome, the default Samba workgroup, and only my computer.. changing the workgroup does nothing, it just puts my comp into it and I still can't see anyone.. and they can't see me. I have tried several different smb.conf's and even mapping it as a network drive from Windows XP and nothing works. I only ever see myself from my machine. I can browse my shares with a bit of tinkering, but that's not the issue.

This is clearly some giant bug because all this used to work in Edgy. Please, please, look into it.. I think I'm gonna be downgrading soon because I need my network. Unless someone can point me to a place where I can get Edgy's samba packages? Will they even work?

Thanks

Kalinda, did you look for a line "msdfs proxy = no" in your smb.conf, removed it and did a "sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart" and your problem remained? Then this might be a different issue.

Concerning downgrading, mrvanes said on 2007-03-24: "Downgrading samba, samba-common, smbclient and libsmbclient to Edgy's 3.0.22-1ubuntu4.1 resolves the problem." (see above). You might want to contact him directly if this did not work for you ;-)

The downgrade was a first test to see if I could pinpoint it to package versions and provide a quick 'n dirty workaround.
It turns out this is true, but also that the 'msdfs proxy' line is the (my) problem, so we could pretty safe say that Feisty's samba just doesn't gracefully ignore the 'misconfiguration' that KDE's gui adds. Edgy's (samba) version either recognises, or gracefully ignores this line... I would suggest everyone who encounters problems with samba sharing in Feisty to check for the msdfs proxy line in all shares and remove it, and then report back here.

I am pretty sure it's a misconfiguration, because in all events it is not a boolean setting, but a path. From the smb.conf manual:

msdfs proxy (S)
This parameter indicates that the share is a stand-in for another CIFS share whose location is specified by the value of the parameter. When clients attempt to connect to this share, they are redirected to the proxied share using the SMB-Dfs protocol.
Only Dfs roots can act as proxy shares. Take a look at themsdfs root and host msdfs options to find out how to set up a Dfs root share.

No default

Example: msdfs proxy = \otherserver\someshare

Bingo, I've been affected also (cost me some gray hair). I auto-upgraded from edgy to feisty and am running into this exact problem. It's present in Samba version 3.0.24-2ubuntu1.1. Commenting out line "msdfs proxy = no" resolves the issue.

For good order: I noticed Samba (and friends) 3.0.24-2ubuntu1.1 slipping into Feisty yesterday (coming from 3.0.24-2ubuntu1) and can confirm that the problem still exists in this update.

Confirmed. Problem persists (I was so hoping, that the samba upgrade was in order to fix this annoyance). Anyway, maybe the problem should be solved on the configuration-creating side (KDE configuration tools o.e.)?

I'm pretty disheartened that this bug is still characterized "needs info" on the top. To synthesize the comments (and my own experiences):

1. Samba as released on Feisty doesn't play nicely with the values "msdfs proxy = yes" or "msdfs proxy = no" in smb.conf. Boolean values appear to be illegal for this configuration option anyway.

2. At least one GUI -- KControl -- unconditionally adds one of the two lines to every share, rendering it (the share) useless. SWAT may also have this problem. (Perhaps Samba changed the syntax of this option during development?)

3. It is possible that this assumption is built into a separate process that handles upgrades. (This happened to me as I upgraded from Edgy, as it did to several others. I don't know if the above line was inserted in the upgrade or if the older version of Samba was just ignoring it. Regardless, you can't fix it from the GUI -- KControl adds it in unconditionally.)

4. MSDFS is a distributed filesystem feature that is unlikely to be used in a SOHO or home environment, where the GUI Is most likely to be used. Conversely, as people above have pointed out, administrators who know enough about Samba and CIFS to be using this feature are much less likely to use the GUI, preferring to edit it by hand. In any event, the GUI is _forcing_ them to hand-maintain their configuration file in the current regime...along with everyone else who is having this problem, many of which (like me) just wanted things to work without thinking about it too much.

From this information, the course of action seems obvious to me: patch KControl to, at a minimum, disable MSDFS options and not write the "msdfs proxy" line to smb.conf. Actually providing MSDFS management capability through the GUI would be nice; but users who run a distributed file system in production are much less likely to be using a basic GUI to maintain their Samba configuration file. Too much depends on them knowing exactly how that file works and what's in it.

A stretch goal would be to actually fix KControl to handle this option appropriately, but to fix this defect, all that's required is that KControl not break the application it purports to configure.

I understand that more important bugs probably exist in Ubuntu that demand attention, but I'm sad that this bug doesn't appear to have had even rudimentary triage, ever, and it predates the end of beta.* If there is already a bug filed on KControl tracking this elsewhere in the Ubuntu universe, please mark this as a duplicate so we can track the appropriate bug. Actually, any acknowledgment that this bug report has been read and appreciated by developers would be nice. Thanks.

* Does that mean that Feisty shipped before some of the bugs filed against it in beta were even _read_? That seems out of character for this distribution, but I have to say, I'm disheartened by the deafening silence from developers or QA on this bug (except Ralph Janke's unrelated comment on the tone of Lithium's post). I hope that it's simply an unmarked duplicate, personally. Prove me right. :)

In the interest of getting the status moved up from "needs info", I just want to add that I ran into this exact problem too. I have a mythtv server/file server that I've samba'ed with other windoze and linux systems in my home. Everything was fine until I upgraded from edgy to feisty, when I started getting on my mythtv client box:
7478: tree connect failed: ERRDOS - ERRnosuchshare (You specified an invalid share name)
SMB connection failed
on my mounts. I commented the msdfs parm on my server system and everything came up roses.

Thankfully I only wasted about an hour on this when I came across this bug report. Thanks very much for the report guys!!

Error still persists in today's upgrade to samba_3.0.24-2ubuntu1.2. (Temporaryly inserted the "msdfs proxy" line for testing purpose.)

Would be interesting to know if anybody from the samba team only recognized this bug: Still not assigned to nobody, importance still "undedided", status on "needs info" without anybody telling which sort of info might be required, Seems to be sort of no-go-area for for the team, here...

Just to keep pooring info in this bug. This is the related KDE bug:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137577

You're right, KDE should be blamed for misconfiguring samba.

But samba should kindfully ignore OBVIOUS misconfiguration!
(Or would "no" ever be judged a valid network path to a CIFS share?)

I am not so sure it is strictly a kde issue. I just did a test install of pclinuxos 2007 and all the kde ->samba configuration tools are behaving as they should. So maybe it is a kubuntu->kde issue.

As in every bug, it's most important to specify versions of the applications. As we are discussing this bug in a (k)ubuntu forum, we have no clue what version of samba and kde pclinuxos2007 ships.

For your information, Edgy doens't suffer from this bug and ships with samba 3.0.22 and kde 3.5.5.

Finally, I can confirm, that kcontrol has been updated here, and new shares do only get the following:
[stuff]
path = /path/stuff/
guest ok = yes

That issue is resolved for me. Can someone else test it also?
As always, it needs some time, but bugs are still fixed a lot faster in the organic community, than in the static microsoft world.
And please, always remember, the guys fixing this stuff, are not getting paid for their work. So whinig about developers who "don't care" will not help a bit.

Thanks for all your efforts!

I must correct myself. As soon, as you are using "security options" i.e. hosts allow, the3 msdfs proxy is used again...
sorry for my misleading success-story abov...

[stuff]
 path = /path/stuff/
case sensitive = no
strict locking = no
msdfs proxy = no
hosts allow = 192.168.1.0/24

Chris, I admit that I would stop insisting, too, were I kinda sure this erraneous behaviour would not be generated again because KDE was fixed.

But as far as I have followed the discussion, the initial action in fact was a change in samba, making it more sensitive to an obvious misconfiguration where it used to kindfully ignore the same, before. This "new feature" - if it was not necessary for any other reason - should be removed from samba again, imho.

Sorry for the exclusion, pclinuxos ships samba vers. 3.0.23b.
@fbusse I still think it is a mix of both, Kubuntus interpretation of kde and samba (shiped with kubuntu 7.04 as of today 3.0.4)

As stated it worked in edgy and it works in pclinuxos 2007. So I think this is a kubuntu issue.

I simply upgraded from Edgy to Feisty and lost the functionality of samba. And all I had was simple shares that were all public (security = share).

Now, a lot of posts mentioned that removing "msdfs proxy = no" from smb.conf did the trick. In my case, however, there was no "msdfs proxy = no" in my smb.conf file so I was stumped.

After fiddling and searching, I just added "msdfs proxy = no" in my smb.conf and restarted samba (sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart). And then I commented out "msdfs proxy = no" and restarted samba (I think I even had to restart Ubuntu itself).

And voila! It's now working. I can dupllicate the problem. If I uncomment "msdfs proxy = no" in my smb.conf and restart samba, it won't work. If I comment it out again, it works.

Although it got quite off topic, I agree with the comments on this post. This bug should have not come out with the release. Remember that I only used the auto upgrade process as suggested by Ubuntu (I didn't ask for it!).

But I'd have to agree with Chris: "That's the price of freedom, platform-independence and community-driven tests. I still think it's an affordable price." As a completely open source solution, UBUNTU rocks! However, if we want UBUNTU to be a replacement for MS Windows, then this is definitely not the right path.

Take a look at http://git.altlinux.ru/people/morozov/packages/?p=kdenetwork.git;a=commit;h=68a44da45c0820965b0929159be00a176f11d253

The patch kdenetwork-3.5.7-alt-msdfsProxyType.patch solves the problem (well, at least at first glance :-)). If the patch can be applied to Ubuntu kdenetwork package, feel free to use it. Probably filing a bug to bugs.kde.org is also a good idea, but I'm not sure I will enforce myself to do...

The related kde bug is already mentioned in this thread/bug.

Thanks taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, I am closing it because the bug has been fixed in the latest development version of Ubuntu - the Gutsy Gibbon. The msdfs proxy option has been fixed in 3.0.25.

Thanks for your work Alexey!

BAD realtek 8169 module
============================
Hi Everyone, I hope this helps.

I had a similar problem on Feisty ( 2.6.20-15-generic and 2.6.20-16-generic) with SAMBA going REALLY REALLY slow.
Tried alll sorts of smb.conf tweeks.. no luck.

However I noticed that SAMBA access would go fast when 2 different windowze machines were basically accessing the same files

I eventually resolved it by downloading and compiling a new module/driver for the on board Realtek NIC
The default install of Feisty created a module r8169 for my machine.
I downloaded and compiled a new driver/module for RTL8111B/RTL8168B/RTL8111/RTL8168/RTL8111C NIC from the Realtek site:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=5&PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

Followed the readme instructions to build and install.
After rebooting I found I had the 2 modules (r8169 and r8168) loaded :-(

So I manually removed both and then manually loaded the r8168 module
'bounced the network (/etc/init.d/networking restart) and presto.. super fast SAMBA access

Btw the msdfs proxy made absolutely no difference for me.

Reopening as 3.0.26a has the same problem:

Define a share:
[tmp]
  path = /tmp

$ smbclient //gutsy-server/tmp
Password:
Domain=[GUTSY-SERVER] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.26a]
smb: \>

Add msdfs proxy option:
[tmp]
  path = /tmp
  msdfs proxy = no

Restart samba.

$ smbclient //gutsy-server/tmp
Password:
Domain=[GUTSY-SERVER] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.26a]
tree connect failed: NT_STATUS_BAD_NETWORK_NAME

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, this bug is a duplicate of bug 95452 and is being marked as such. Feel free to submit any future bugs you may find.

The problem comes from the kde control center that adds the msdfs proxy option. As mentioned above, msdfs proxy should be a path. So samba is not able to find the share because the path no doesn't exist.