[MacTUG] Samba: fix to name or password error

[Marlon A. Griffith]

Situation:
I was trying to connect to a smb mount through the finder, using 
"smb://mansci4.uwaterloo.ca/website/" and got the error, "Could not 
connect to server because the name or password is incorrect." Yet, I 
could connect to "smb://ecfile1.uwaterloo.ca/m3griffi/" with no 
issue. This suggested that the problem with with the server mansci4.


Testing:
 From discussions in the MacTug group, I tried the unix utility 
smbclient and connected with no error to mansci4. Therefore, the 
issue is with the finder's smb client.


Solution:
Through a web search, I found the solution at 
http://www.macosx.com/forums/networking-compatibility/52386-smb-shares-tiger.html. 
Here is the full quote:
"""
Tiger now assumes that your smb server accepts encrypted passwords. 
Older Windows NT and Unix/Linux servers running Samba (versions older 
that 3.0) are configured to accept Plain Text passwords. It is highly 
recommended that the severs be re-configured to accept encrypted 
passwords. However below is a fix to tell Tiger to send a plain text 
password for authentication. This assumes you have a working 
knowledge of the unix command line.

1. open a terminal session
2. cd /etc
3. sudo vi nsmb.conf (NOT the smb.conf file...this may ADD a new file...)
4. add these lines...
[default]
minauth=none

5. save file (wq)

BE AWARE that this now sends plain text and can be easily captured 
(via tcpdunp).
"""

The only thing extra that I did was to change the chmod of the nsmb 
file to reflect the same as smb.conf:
   sudo chmod 755 nsmb.conf

It worked!


Other References:
1) The Apple Knowledge base article describing the issue:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301580

2) MacWindows special article:
  Workaround: Tiger SMB mounting problem linked to password 
encryption, http://www.macwindows.com/tiger.html#052305a