The late XV105

WD MyBook World Edition II NAS running Busybox Linux, all folders specified as Public, and sitting on the home network with fixed IP address. Navigation to the folder structure via shortcut in Windows Explorer has worked flawlessly since installation well over a year ago. PC is running XP SP3 MCE 2005.

Flawlessly that is, until last week when clicking the shortcut started resulting in a Username and Password dialogue window. Typing anything at all in the Username field and not even bothering with a password results in access, and that access is then maintained without seeing the dialogue again until the PC is rebooted. It then presents itself once more the first time access to the NAS is attempted, and so on.

The heading of the dialogue window is "Connect to localhost.localdomain" but I have not touched my host file in yonks and in any case 127.0.0.1 localhost exists in it. The PC is also in a workgroup, not a domain.

Ideas to stop this annoying box, please?

Normally I might live with it but until I have manually prompted it to pop-up and then "logged in" to the NAS, my backup to the NAS doesn't work (Destination not available). As soon as I have "logged in" then the backup runs too even though it is to a different (higher) part of the folder hierarchy than the manual log-in.

Other PCs on the home network (XP home, XP Pro, and W7 Professional) all "see" the NAS folder structure without needing a manual login first, so the problem is probably with this specific PC.


Many thanks!
XV

Mike-Bracknell

Map a network drive?

mad_jock

I would delete the mappings and short cut and then start again.

I have seen this before and that cured it. I never put much effort into finding out why it did it. It was an ops computer and I was always stunned that the thing didn't fall over more often.

If you have children on this machine (anything up to the age of 30) using that account give them there own one and make sure it doesn't have admin rights.

The late XV105

Thanks, Both!

No mapped network drive because I have an aversion to them (Windows Explorer navigation performance to any folder is normally piss-poor if the mapped drive is unavailable for some reason).

I just tried the new shortcut idea but it didn't help, unfortunately. In fact, simply going to the Windows Explorer address bar and typing \\the.I.P.address followed by "return" results in the pop-up login dialogue the first time it is done since boot. Grrrr.

Anything to hack in the Windows Registry? (Yes, it is backed up)

Ta,
XV

mad_jock

Are you running in Admin rights or normal user?

I have a sneaky feeling there has been a change in networking side of things on the XP machines. Sometimes even a dialog box popup which you click yes to get rid of it can have far reaching consequences. If your in normal user rights it will stop you doing changes.

I have no doudt there will something on

Microsoft TechNet UK: Resources for IT Professionals

Its quite hard diagnosing probs like this without getting your hands on the machine and just running through all the network and security menus to make sure everything looks right.

The late XV105

I'm running as a User with admin rights but as I am the only User of the PC (and I thought I was reasonably IT savvy!) this should be low risk!

le Pingouin

The "localhost.localdomain" would be the host name for the NAS box, which probably means the NAS box is asking for the username & password.

As to where the problem lies.......

mad_jock

Never ever run with admin rights on an account you use everyday. Anything nasty comes near you and its curtains.

Even when we log into a NIX server we never do it as root, we always go in as a normal user then su - in a shell to start work. Most servers won't even let you. Its partly for protection and also party to be able to trace who has done what when you have multiple admins tinkering.

The localdomain could be either machine to be honest as it a common default on a build.

You could change either machine to see which one is giving you the issue but I am nearly certain it will be the Microsoft one. I suspect you have ticked a box on some security setting and the reason why its asking is to allow some sync function to work.

You could try creating a share on another machine and connecting to that to see if you get the same issue. If you don't creat a new share on the NAS box and again see and use that one for testing to protect your data in the true share.

The late XV105

A very fair point and normally I would agree with you (and certainly would if others too used the machine) but to cut a long story short I ended up making a convenient decision to run as an administrator. In the relatively unlikely (not impossible, granted) chance that it gets infected it will quite easily be rebuilt from a combination of clone (of the partitioned HDD with os and apps and nothing else) and backup (of data to the other three HDDs). I will only blame myself if I need to do this!

To the problem; as mentioned before my money is on the PC as all other machines on the network do not have this issue when connecting to the NAS. I am pretty sure the NAS is not asking for a username and password.

Will do some more digging ce soir.

mad_jock

Well then if you have a clone just rebuild it.

I would still run in user mode without admin rights.

I would say I am more than savy and have sensible protection but I would still never dream of running with Admin rights.

And if your about rebuilding maybe think about win7 from a admin point of view its very easy not to operate in admin mode. It will let you upgrade for individual acts. I haven't had any issues with it yet appart from access to certain system files which a normal punter wouldn't want to touch anyway (which is proberly why they made it a PIA to edit them)

Booglebox

Looks to my amateur eyes like an IP address conflict. You could try restarting whatever does DHCP for you (if you use that) (e.g. router), and then in a command prompt doing ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew on the affected machine.

The late XV105

No intention to rebuild just yet as I have a beautifully performing machine other this niggle; I'd rather find the cause than simply "solve" it in ignorance.

The late XV105

Looks to my amateur eyes like an IP address conflict.

Nice try, but no IP address conflict. Yes, I do use DHCP but every machine that lives on the network gets a fixed IP address and I can see that this is working. The only IP addresses handed out from the pool are those for visitors' machines that I let on to the network.

I have however now solved the problem by renaming the Workgroup on the NAS, powering it down (controlled), renaming the workgroup to match on each computer, and then rebooting the NAS. Bingo. Solved - even if I still have no idea what triggered it. Between it working and not working I hadn't even done my regular PC housekeeping let alone install anything knowingly.

Anyway - Happy Camper.
Thanks for the help along the way, All.

XV

mad_jock

Don't you just love computers.

Workgroups are just such a pile of poo.

If it ever takes your fancy stick a domain controller on the linux box.

I know you don't want to but drop the admin rights on the account. It really does make a huge difference.

The late XV105

Out of courtesy and for accuracy should someone else with the same problem find this thread:

Despite appearances yesterday, I was wrong; the problem resurfaced today but has now been put to bed thanks to some Linux pointers I was given.

• Using WinSCP I opened /etc/samba/smb.conf and changed Security = User to Security = Share

Given that the NAS was in use for over a year before the problem manifested against the XP PC in question (and it didn't manifest at all against the other XP and W7 devices on the network) I have no idea what triggered the effect, but the important thing is that it really is fixed now!

What will be interesting is if it also fixes the lock that eventually happens (at some point from minutes to hours) when I stream music to my Acoustic Energy internet radio from a USB HDD piggybacked on to the NAS. If not, I now have the Samba manual as something to play with, all other sources of info having failed to crack this one!

The late XV105

Would you believe that in fixing the problem affecting one PC I have now broken all the others! This is mad!

In smb.conf, set Security = User and the original problem returns (the XP PC cannot see shared folders on the NAS but all the other computers can) but set Security = Share and the opposite happens!

More digging required...

The late XV105

Pasted below are the contents of the smb.conf file that I am editing to try and solve the problem. In its current state with security = share the XP PC does connect to the folder shares but all other computers don't. If I change this to Security = user then the reverse happens. Totally maddening and I have not yet found another parameter to influence this behaviour.

Can you help teach me, please?

[global][Configuration]
The Samba help file indicates that my problem should never happen. To quote from the guide:

If the service is marked “guest only = yes” and the server is running with share-level security “security = share”, steps 1 to 5 are skipped. (so this should apply to me using the above .conf file, but it only does for one of the PCs)

1. If the client has passed a username/password pair and that username/password pair is validated by the UNIX system's password programs, the connection is made as that username. This includes the \\server\service%username method of passing a username.
2. If the client has previously registered a username with the system and now supplies a correct password for that username, the connection is allowed.
3. The client's NetBIOS name and any previously used usernames are checked against the supplied password. If they match, the connection is allowed as the corresponding user.
4. If the client has previously validated a username/password pair with the server and the client has passed the validation token, that username is used.
5. If a user = field is given in the smb.conf file for the service and the client has supplied a password, and that password matches (according to the UNIX system's password checking) with one of the usernames from the user = field, the connection is made as the username in the user = line. If one of the usernames in the user = list begins with a @, that name expands to a list of names in the group of the same name.
6. If the service is a guest service, a connection is made as the username given in the guest account = for the service, irrespective of the supplied password.

Yes, account "nobody" exists from what I can see.

Many thanks for your help.

The late XV105

The problem was caused by the PC that originally experienced the connection failure having an account with the same name as one on the NAS that I had completely forgotten about; after I deleted this NAS account and set the smb.conf file back to security = user and guest only = no (i.e the same as it was before I started troubleshooting) all was well. Every PC on the home network can now connect to the Public shares on the NAS.

I'm annoyed that I missed something so obvious, but have learned a heap about Samba that I wouldn't have learned otherwise so will chalk this up as a success.

Rather than recently "starting to happen" as I thought, it must have been a problem all along but how I missed it, I have no idea. I can only think that something else that connects to the NAS was "opening" the connection for me before I came along and clicked it. A bit like I remember about 15 years ago when I couldn't get a PC to connect to a Sun workstation unless the latter was PINGed once first. Anyway, I don't care; it's fixed and I now have something else to fix (plumbing!).