Samba stopped working

I'm sure that it's related with the latest security Patch from Samba on 12 April https://www.samba.org/samba/latest_news.html#4.4.2

I've a Raspberrypi running Samba 4.4.2 and all shares stop working on OSX (Yosemite / El Capitan). Windows or Linux are running fine. Finally I could make a downgrade of samba stuff and everything is working again.

I guess that the samba client on OSX has some kind of incompatibility with the april security update on samba server.

I'm having the same issue. I'm trying to setup a new Raspberry Pi 3 with Retropie and suddenly the samba shares will not connect. I had to revert back to SFTP which is far less convenient.

I have run into the same issue but only when using a guest account.

Completely agree with Marbi. I have a Fedora 23 Linux server. After updating Samba on this server to the version with the April 12 security fixes (4.3.8), I could no longer connect to Samba shares on the server from El Capitan 10.11.4 and 10.11.5 Public Betas 2 and 3.

After downgrading Samba on the Fedora 23 Linux server to the prior version (4.3.0), I could connect to Samba shares on the server from El Capitan.

So El Capitan has a bug in that it cannot connect to Linux servers running the latest version of Samba with the April 12 security fixes (4.3.8, 4.4.2).

Note: all connection attempts were made as Guest user as required by the Samba setup on the Linux server. I did not try connecting as a named user.

I sent Feedback to Apple about this issue; hopefully they will fix it before 10.11.5 Final is released.

Hi Ron,

Do you know if there has been a bug report filed about this yet and if so whether we can follow it somewhere? Most users in my institute use Macs to connect to shared drives via guest accounts and our server is Debian-based and therefore doesn't support downgrades so this is a critical problem for us.

Cheers,

Tom

Hi Tom,

I sent feedback to Apple using their OS X Feedback app, but have not filed a bug report. That would be a good thing to do. I'm in the Beta program for OS X and verified that the problem still exists in 10.11.5 Public Beta 3. I have a (free) developer account; I'll look into filing a bug report.

If you have a developer account, feel free to file a bug report if you want.

Sorry to hear that your Debian-based server does not support downgrades; this is easy to do in Fedora Linux. Perhaps a command-line downgrade procedure could be done with local copies of the downgraded packages that need to be installed? You should get your best IT person working on this. Here's a Debian secutiry rollback procedure for Mozilla that could be adapted for Samba: https://wiki.debian.org/RollbackUpdate

--Ron

Hi Ron,

I have just filed a new bug report for this issue. However, I read here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/144873/can-i-browse-other-peoples-apple-bug-r eports that the more people file bug reports the higher priority the problem becomes to Apple developers. So it would probably be a good idea for you, and anyone else affected by this issue, to submit a separate bug report using your developer logins (you aren't able to view mine in any case).

I started going down the route of manually downgrading samba packages and their dependencies as suggested on that rollback wiki you posted. However, as I rolled back individual packages the list of dependencies started to grow exponentially so I stopped before I lost track of where I was up to. If this problem proves persistent then I may have another go as it is quite an annoying problem for our workflow.

I would put my best IT person on it, but that (only) person happens to be me 😉

Cheers,

Tom

Thanks, Tom. I'll file a bug report using my developer account. Interesting that Apple's Bug Reporting system is so closed, completely unlike the open Bugzilla system used by Fedora, where people can view and comment on other's bug reports.

Is there any way to check the install logs to see what packages were updated at the same time as the Samba security update? That would give you a good handle on the dependencies. Glad you have your best IT person working on it!

I just updated my Mac to 10.11.5 Public Beta 4 (15F31a). Unfortunately, the Samba connection problem still exists. OS X cannot connect to a Fedora 23 Linux Samba server running Samba 4.3.8, connecting as Guest, using smb:// or cifs://. Downgrading to Samba 4.3.0 fixes the problem.

I filed a bug report with Apple on this issue. I hope they will fix it before 10.11.5 Final is released.

I ended up using quite a simple work-around (obvious now with hindsight), which was just to create a dummy guest account (i.e. a named account called "guest") and send an email out to my users. Not ideal, but I didn't end up needing to add it explicitly to my existing shares because simply signing in with a valid user was enough to bypass the bug.

Fedora just release Samba 4.3.9 for Fedora 23. This version fixes a number of regression bugs introduced in Samba 4.3.8. I installed this version on my Fedora 23 Linux system, and now I can connect to these Samba shares from El Capitan 10.11.5 Public Beta 4 using the Guest login.

I see that Samba 4.4.3 also has these regression fixes that were not in 4.4.2. If you can upgrade your Debian system to Samba 4.4.3, it might fix your problem without requiring a work-around.

See https://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-4.4.3.html and https://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-4.3.9.html for more info on the latest Samba changes.

Confirmed working Samba 4.4.3 with OSX 10.11.4 (15E65) on Arch Linux raspberrypi2 4.4.10-1-ARCH armv7l with guest account.