1 <!doctype linuxdoc system> <!-- -*- SGML -*- -->
3 v 0.5 18 Oct 1996 Dan Shearer Dan.Shearer@unisa.edu.au
4 First linuxdoc-sgml version, outline only
6 Filled in from current text faq
8 Replicated changes in txt faq to sgml faq
15 <author>Paul Blackman, <tt>ictinus@lake.canberra.edu.au</tt>
19 <abstract> This is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document for
20 Samba, the free and very popular SMB server product. An SMB server
21 allows file and printer connections from clients such as Windows,
22 OS/2, Linux and others. Current to version 1.9.17. Please send any
23 corrections to the author.
28 <sect> General Information<p> <label id="general_info">
30 All about Samba - what it is, how to get it, related sources of
31 information, how to understand the version numbering scheme, pizza
34 <sect1> What is Samba? <p> <label id="introduction">
36 Samba is a suite of programs which work together to allow clients to
37 access to a server's filespace and printers via the SMB (Server
38 Message Block) protocol. Initially written for Unix, Samba now also
39 runs on Netware, OS/2 and VMS.
41 In practice, this means that you can redirect disks and printers to
42 Unix disks and printers from Lan Manager clients, Windows for
43 Workgroups 3.11 clients, Windows NT clients, Linux clients and OS/2
44 clients. There is also a generic Unix client program supplied as part
45 of the suite which allows Unix users to use an ftp-like interface to
46 access filespace and printers on any other SMB servers. This gives the
47 capability for these operating systems to behave much like a LAN
48 Server or Windows NT Server machine, only with added functionality and
49 flexibility designed to make life easier for administrators.
51 The components of the suite are (in summary):
55 <item> smbd, the SMB server. This handles actual connections from
56 clients, doing all the file, permission and username work
58 <item>nmbd, the Netbios name server, which helps clients locate
59 servers, doing the browsing work and managing domains as this
60 capability is being built into Samba
62 <item>smbclient, the Unix-hosted client program
64 <item>smbrun, a little 'glue' program to help the server run external
67 <item>testprns, a program to test server access to printers
69 <item>testparms, a program to test the Samba configuration file for
72 <item>smb.conf, the Samba configuration file
74 <item> smbprint, a sample script to allow a Unix host to use smbclient
75 to print to an SMB server
77 <item> documentation! DON'T neglect to read it - you will save a great
82 The suite is supplied with full source (of course!) and is GPLed.
84 The primary creator of the Samba suite is Andrew Tridgell. Later
85 versions incorporate much effort by many net.helpers. The man pages
86 and this FAQ were originally written by Karl Auer.
88 <sect1> What is the current version of Samba? <p> <label id="current_version">
90 At time of writing, the current version was 1.9.16. If you want to be
91 sure check the bottom of the change-log file. <url
92 url="ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/alpha/change-log">
94 For more information see <ref id="version_nums" name="What do the
95 version numbers mean?">
97 <sect1> Where can I get it? <p> <label id="where">
99 The Samba suite is available via anonymous ftp from
100 samba.anu.edu.au. The latest and greatest versions of the suite are in
105 Development (read "alpha") versions, which are NOT necessarily stable
106 and which do NOT necessarily have accurate documentation, are
107 available in the directory:
111 Note that binaries are NOT included in any of the above. Samba is
112 distributed ONLY in source form, though binaries may be available from
113 other sites. Recent versions of some Linux distributions, for example,
114 do contain Samba binaries for that platform.
116 <sect1> What do the version numbers mean? <p> <label id="version_nums">
118 It is not recommended that you run a version of Samba with the word
119 "alpha" in its name unless you know what you are doing and are willing
120 to do some debugging. Many, many people just get the latest
121 recommended stable release version and are happy. If you are brave, by
122 all means take the plunge and help with the testing and development -
123 but don't install it on your departmental server. Samba is typically
124 very stable and safe, and this is mostly due to the policy of many
127 How the scheme works:
129 1) when major changes are made the version number is increased. For
130 example, the transition from 1.9.15 to 1.9.16. However, this version
131 number will not appear immediately and people should continue to use
132 1.9.15 for production systems (see next point.)
134 2) just after major changes are made the software is considered
135 unstable, and a series of alpha releases are distributed, for example
136 1.9.16alpha1. These are for testing by those who know what they are
137 doing. The "alpha" in the filename will hopefully scare off those who
138 are just looking for the latest version to install.
140 3) when Andrew thinks that the alphas have stabilised to the point
141 where he would recommend new users install it, he renames it to the
142 same version number without the alpha, for example 1.9.16.
144 4) inevitably bugs are found in the "stable" releases and minor patch
145 levels are released which give us the pXX series, for example
148 So the progression goes:
150 1.9.15p7 (production)
151 1.9.15p8 (production)
152 1.9.16alpha1 (test sites only)
154 1.9.16alpha20 (test sites only)
156 1.9.16p1 (production)
158 The above system means that whenever someone looks at the samba ftp
159 site they will be able to grab the highest numbered release without an
160 alpha in the name and be sure of getting the current recommended
163 <sect1> What platforms are supported? <p> <label id="platforms">
165 Many different platforms have run Samba successfully. The platforms
166 most widely used and thus best tested are Linux and SunOS.
168 At time of writing, the Makefile claimed support for:
171 <item> Linux with shadow passwords
172 <item> Linux without shadow passwords
174 <item> SOLARIS 2.2 and above (aka SunOS 5)
177 <item> OSF1 (alpha only)
178 <item> OSF1 with NIS and Fast Crypt (alpha only)
179 <item> OSF1 V2.0 Enhanced Security (alpha only)
187 <item> SGI IRIX 4.x.x
188 <item> SGI IRIX 5.x.x
190 <item> NeXT 3.2 and above
193 <item> ISC SVR3V4 (POSIX mode)
194 <item> ISC SVR3V4 (iBCS2 mode)
196 <item> SCO with shadow passwords.
197 <item> SCO with shadow passwords, without YP.
198 <item> SCO with TCB passwords
199 <item> SCO 3.2v2 (ODT 1.1) with TCP passwords
202 <item> Apollo Domain/OS sr10.3 (BSD4.3)
205 <sect1> How can I find out more about Samba? <p> <label id="more">
207 There are two mailing lists devoted to discussion of Samba-related
208 matters. There is also the newsgroup, comp.protocols.smb, which has a
209 great deal of discussion on Samba. There is also a WWW site 'SAMBA Web
210 Pages' at http://samba.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba/samba.html, under
211 which there is a comprehensive survey of Samba users. Another useful
212 resource is the hypertext archive of the Samba mailing list.
214 Send email to listproc@samba.anu.edu.au. Make sure the subject line is
215 blank, and include the following two lines in the body of the message:
217 subscribe samba Firstname Lastname
218 subscribe samba-announce Firstname Lastname
220 Obviously you should substitute YOUR first name for "Firstname" and
221 YOUR last name for "Lastname"! Try not to send any signature stuff, it
222 sometimes confuses the list processor.
224 The samba list is a digest list - every eight hours or so it
225 regurgitates a single message containing all the messages that have
226 been received by the list since the last time and sends a copy of this
227 message to all subscribers.
229 If you stop being interested in Samba, please send another email to
230 listproc@samba.anu.edu.au. Make sure the subject line is blank, and
231 include the following two lines in the body of the message:
234 unsubscribe samba-announce
236 The From: line in your message MUST be the same address you used when
239 <sect1> Something's gone wrong - what should I do? <p> <label id="wrong">
241 [#] *** IMPORTANT! *** [#]
242 DO NOT post messages on mailing lists or in newsgroups until you have
243 carried out the first three steps given here!
245 Firstly, see if there are any likely looking entries in this FAQ! If
246 you have just installed Samba, have you run through the checklist in
247 DIAGNOSIS.txt? It can save you a lot of time and effort.
249 Secondly, read the man pages for smbd, nmbd and smb.conf, looking for
250 topics that relate to what you are trying to do.
252 Thirdly, if there is no obvious solution to hand, try to get a look at
253 the log files for smbd and/or nmbd for the period during which you
254 were having problems. You may need to reconfigure the servers to
255 provide more extensive debugging information - usually level 2 or
256 level 3 provide ample debugging info. Inspect these logs closely,
257 looking particularly for the string "Error:".
259 Fourthly, if you still haven't got anywhere, ask the mailing list or
260 newsgroup. In general nobody minds answering questions provided you
261 have followed the preceding steps. It might be a good idea to scan the
262 archives of the mailing list, which are available through the Samba
263 web site described in the previous
266 If you successfully solve a problem, please mail the FAQ maintainer a
267 succinct description of the symptom, the problem and the solution, so
268 I can incorporate it in the next version.
270 If you make changes to the source code, _please_ submit these patches
271 so that everyone else gets the benefit of your work. This is one of
272 the most important aspects to the maintainence of Samba. Send all
273 patches to samba-bugs@samba.anu.edu.au, not Andrew Tridgell or any
274 other individual and not the samba team mailing list.
276 <sect1> Pizza supply details <p> <label id="pizza">
278 Those who have registered in the Samba survey as "Pizza Factory" will
279 already know this, but the rest may need some help. Andrew doesn't ask
280 for payment, but he does appreciate it when people give him
281 pizza. This calls for a little organisation when the pizza donor is
282 twenty thousand kilometres away, but it has been done.
284 Method 1: Ring up your local branch of an international pizza chain
285 and see if they honour their vouchers internationally. Pizza Hut do,
286 which is how the entire Canberra Linux Users Group got to eat pizza
287 one night, courtesy of someone in the US
289 Method 2: Ring up a local pizza shop in Canberra and quote a credit
290 card number for a certain amount, and tell them that Andrew will be
291 collecting it (don't forget to tell him.) One kind soul from Germany
294 Method 3: Purchase a pizza voucher from your local pizza shop that has
295 no international affiliations and send it to Andrew. It is completely
296 useless but he can hang it on the wall next to the one he already has
299 Method 4: Air freight him a pizza with your favourite regional
300 flavours. It will probably get stuck in customs or torn apart by
301 hungry sniffer dogs but it will have been a noble gesture.
303 <sect>Compiling and installing Samba on a Unix host<p>
304 <label id="unix_install">
306 <sect1>I can't see the Samba server in any browse lists!<p>
307 <label id="no_browse">
309 See ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/BROWSING.txt
310 for more information on browsing. Browsing.txt can also be found
311 in the docs directory of the Samba source.
313 If your GUI client does not permit you to select non-browsable
314 servers, you may need to do so on the command line. For example, under
315 Lan Manager you might connect to the above service as disk drive M:
318 net use M: \\mary\fred
320 The details of how to do this and the specific syntax varies from
321 client to client - check your client's documentation.
323 <sect1>Some files that I KNOW are on the server doesn't show up when I
324 view the files from my client! <p> <label id="missing_files">
326 <sect1>Some files on the server show up with really wierd filenames when
327 I view the files from my client! <p> <label id="strange_filenames">
329 If you check what files are not showing up, you will note that they
330 are files which contain upper case letters or which are otherwise not
331 DOS-compatible (ie, they are not legal DOS filenames for some reason).
333 The Samba server can be configured either to ignore such files
334 completely, or to present them to the client in "mangled" form. If you
335 are not seeing the files at all, the Samba server has most likely been
336 configured to ignore them. Consult the man page smb.conf(5) for
337 details of how to change this - the parameter you need to set is
338 "mangled names = yes".
340 <sect1>My client reports "cannot locate specified computer" or similar<p>
341 <label id="cant_see_server">
343 This indicates one of three things: You supplied an incorrect server
344 name, the underlying TCP/IP layer is not working correctly, or the
345 name you specified cannot be resolved.
347 After carefully checking that the name you typed is the name you
348 should have typed, try doing things like pinging a host or telnetting
349 to somewhere on your network to see if TCP/IP is functioning OK. If it
350 is, the problem is most likely name resolution.
352 If your client has a facility to do so, hardcode a mapping between the
353 hosts IP and the name you want to use. For example, with Man Manager
354 or Windows for Workgroups you would put a suitable entry in the file
355 LMHOSTS. If this works, the problem is in the communication between
356 your client and the netbios name server. If it does not work, then
357 there is something fundamental wrong with your naming and the solution
358 is beyond the scope of this document.
360 If you do not have any server on your subnet supplying netbios name
361 resolution, hardcoded mappings are your only option. If you DO have a
362 netbios name server running (such as the Samba suite's nmbd program),
363 the problem probably lies in the way it is set up. Refer to Section
364 Two of this FAQ for more ideas.
366 By the way, remember to REMOVE the hardcoded mapping before further
369 <sect1>My client reports "cannot locate specified share name" or
371 <label id="cant_see_share">
373 This message indicates that your client CAN locate the specified
374 server, which is a good start, but that it cannot find a service of
377 The first step is to check the exact name of the service you are
378 trying to connect to (consult your system administrator). Assuming it
379 exists and you specified it correctly (read your client's doco on how
380 to specify a service name correctly), read on:
383 <item> Many clients cannot accept or use service names longer than eight characters.
384 <item> Many clients cannot accept or use service names containing spaces.
385 <item> Some servers (not Samba though) are case sensitive with service names.
386 <item> Some clients force service names into upper case.
389 <sect1>My client reports "cannot find domain controller", "cannot log
390 on to the network" or similar <p> <label id="cant_see_net">
392 Nothing is wrong - Samba does not implement the primary domain name
393 controller stuff for several reasons, including the fact that the
394 whole concept of a primary domain controller and "logging in to a
395 network" doesn't fit well with clients possibly running on multiuser
396 machines (such as users of smbclient under Unix). Having said that,
397 several developers are working hard on building it in to the next
398 major version of Samba. If you can contribute, send a message to
401 Seeing this message should not affect your ability to mount redirected
402 disks and printers, which is really what all this is about.
404 For many clients (including Windows for Workgroups and Lan Manager),
405 setting the domain to STANDALONE at least gets rid of the message.
407 <sect1>Printing doesn't work :-(<p> <label id="no_printing">
409 Make sure that the specified print command for the service you are
410 connecting to is correct and that it has a fully-qualified path (eg.,
411 use "/usr/bin/lpr" rather than just "lpr").
413 Make sure that the spool directory specified for the service is
414 writable by the user connected to the service. In particular the user
415 "nobody" often has problems with printing, even if it worked with an
416 earlier version of Samba. Try creating another guest user other than
419 Make sure that the user specified in the service is permitted to use
422 Check the debug log produced by smbd. Search for the printer name and
423 see if the log turns up any clues. Note that error messages to do with
424 a service ipc$ are meaningless - they relate to the way the client
425 attempts to retrieve status information when using the LANMAN1
428 If using WfWg then you need to set the default protocol to TCP/IP, not
429 Netbeui. This is a WfWg bug.
431 If using the Lanman1 protocol (the default) then try switching to
432 coreplus. Also not that print status error messages don't mean
433 printing won't work. The print status is received by a different
436 <sect1>My programs install on the server OK, but refuse to work properly<p>
437 <label id="programs_wont_run">
439 There are numerous possible reasons for this, but one MAJOR
440 possibility is that your software uses locking. Make sure you are
441 using Samba 1.6.11 or later. It may also be possible to work around
442 the problem by setting "locking=no" in the Samba configuration file
443 for the service the software is installed on. This should be regarded
444 as a strictly temporary solution.
446 In earlier Samba versions there were some difficulties with the very
447 latest Microsoft products, particularly Excel 5 and Word for Windows
448 6. These should have all been solved. If not then please let Andrew
449 Tridgell know via email at 'samba-bugs@anu.edu.au'.
451 <sect1>My "server string" doesn't seem to be recognised<p>
452 <label id="bad_server_string">
454 my client reports the default setting, eg. "Samba 1.9.15p4", instead
455 of what I have changed it to in the smb.conf file.
457 You need to use the -C option in nmbd. The "server string" affects
458 what smbd puts out and -C affects what nmbd puts out.
459 Current versions of Samba (1.9.16p11 +) have combined these options into
460 the "server string" field of smb.conf, -C for nmbd is now obsolete.
462 <sect1>My client reports "This server is not configured to list shared
463 resources" <p> <label id="cant_list_shares">
465 Your guest account is probably invalid for some reason. Samba uses the
466 guest account for browsing in smbd. Check that your guest account is
469 See also 'guest account' in smb.conf man page.
471 <sect1>Log message "you appear to have a trapdoor uid system" <p>
472 <label id="trapdoor_uid">
474 This can have several causes. It might be because you are using a uid
475 or gid of 65535 or -1. This is a VERY bad idea, and is a big security
476 hole. Check carefully in your /etc/passwd file and make sure that no
477 user has uid 65535 or -1. Especially check the "nobody" user, as many
478 broken systems are shipped with nobody setup with a uid of 65535.
480 It might also mean that your OS has a trapdoor uid/gid system :-)
482 This means that once a process changes effective uid from root to
483 another user it can't go back to root. Unfortunately Samba relies on
484 being able to change effective uid from root to non-root and back
485 again to implement its security policy. If your OS has a trapdoor uid
486 system this won't work, and several things in Samba may break. Less
487 things will break if you use user or server level security instead of
488 the default share level security, but you may still strike
491 The problems don't give rise to any security holes, so don't panic,
492 but it does mean some of Samba's capabilities will be unavailable.
493 In particular you will not be able to connect to the Samba server as
494 two different uids at once. This may happen if you try to print as a
495 "guest" while accessing a share as a normal user. It may also affect
496 your ability to list the available shares as this is normally done as
499 Complain to your OS vendor and ask them to fix their system.
501 Note: the reason why 65535 is a VERY bad choice of uid and gid is that
502 it casts to -1 as a uid, and the setreuid() system call ignores (with
503 no error) uid changes to -1. This means any daemon attempting to run
504 as uid 65535 will actually run as root. This is not good!
506 <sect>Common client questions<p> <label id="client_questions">
508 <sect1>Are any Macintosh clients for Samba<p> <label id="mac_clients">
510 lkcl - update 09mar97 - the answer is "Yes!". Thursby now have a
511 CIFS Client / Server - see www.thursby.com. They test it against
512 Windows 95, Windows NT and samba for compatibility issues. At
513 present, DAVE is at version 1.0.0. DAVE version 1.0.1 is in beta,
514 and will be released in April 97 (the speed of finder copies has
515 been greatly enhanced, and there are bug-fixes included).
517 Alternatives - There are two free implementations of AppleTalk for
518 several kinds of UNIX machnes, and several more commercial ones.
519 These products allow you to run file services and print services
520 natively to Macintosh users, with no additional support required on
521 the Macintosh. The two free omplementations are Netatalk,
522 http://www.umich.edu/~rsug/netatalk/, and CAP,
523 http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/appletalk/atalk.html. What Samba offers
524 MS Windows users, these packages offer to Macs. For more info on
525 these packages, Samba, and Linux (and other UNIX-based systems)
526 see http://www.eats.com/linux_mac_win.html
528 <sect1>"Session request failed (131,130)" error<p> <label id="sess_req_fail">
530 The following answer is provided by John E. Miller:
532 I'll assume that you're able to ping back and forth between the
533 machines by IP address and name, and that you're using some security
534 model where you're confident that you've got user IDs and passwords
535 right. The logging options (-d3 or greater) can help a lot with that.
536 DNS and WINS configuration can also impact connectivity as well.
538 Now, on to 'scope id's. Somewhere in your Win95 TCP/IP network
539 configuration (I'm too much of an NT bigot to know where it's located
540 in the Win95 setup, but I'll have to learn someday since I teach for a
541 Microsoft Solution Provider Authorized Tech Education Center - what an
542 acronym...) [Note: It's under Control Panel | Network | TCP/IP | WINS
543 Configuration] there's a little text entry field called something like
546 This field essentially creates 'invisible' sub-workgroups on the same
547 wire. Boxes can only see other boxes whose Scope IDs are set to the
548 exact same value - it's sometimes used by OEMs to configure their
549 boxes to browse only other boxes from the same vendor and, in most
550 environments, this field should be left blank. If you, in fact, have
551 something in this box that EXACT value (case-sensitive!) needs to be
552 provided to smbclient and nmbd as the -i (lowercase) parameter. So, if
553 your Scope ID is configured as the string 'SomeStr' in Win95 then
554 you'd have to use smbclient -iSomeStr [otherparms] in connecting to
557 <sect1>How do I synchronise my PC's clock with my Samba server? <p>
558 <label id="synchronise_clock">
560 To syncronize your PC's clock with your Samba server:
563 <item> Copy timesync.pif to your windows directory
564 <item> timesync.pif can be found at:
565 http://samba.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba/binaries/miscellaneous/timesync.pif
566 <item> Add timesync.pif to your 'Start Up' group/folder
567 <item> Open the properties dialog box for the program/icon
568 <item> Make sure the 'Run Minimized' option is set in program 'Properties'
569 <iteM> Change the command line section that reads \\sambahost to reflect the name of your server.
570 <item> Close the properties dialog box by choosing 'OK'
572 Each time you start your computer (or login for Win95) your PC will
573 synchronize it's clock with your Samba server.
575 Alternativley, if you clients support Domain Logons, you can setup Domain Logons with Samba
576 - see: ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/samba/BROWSING.txt *** for more information.
577 Then add NET TIME \\%L /SET /YES as one of the lines in the logon script.
579 <sect1>Problems with WinDD, NTrigue, WinCenterPro etc<p>
580 <label id="multiple_session_clients">
582 All of the above programs are applications that sit on an NT box and
583 allow multiple users to access the NT GUI applications from remote
584 workstations (often over X).
586 What has this got to do with Samba? The problem comes when these users
587 use filemanager to mount shares from a Samba server. The most common
588 symptom is that the first user to connect get correct file permissions
589 and has a nice day, but subsequent connections get logged in as the
590 same user as the first person to login. They find that they cannot
591 access files in their own home directory, but that they can access
592 files in the first users home directory (maybe not such a nice day
595 Why does this happen? The above products all share a common heritage
596 (and code base I believe). They all open just a single TCP based SMB
597 connection to the Samba server, and requests from all users are piped
598 over this connection. This is unfortunate, but not fatal.
600 It means that if you run your Samba server in share level security
601 (the default) then things will definately break as described
602 above. The share level SMB security model has no provision for
603 multiple user IDs on the one SMB connection. See security_level.txt in
604 the docs for more info on share/user/server level security.
606 If you run in user or server level security then you have a chance,
607 but only if you have a recent version of Samba (at least 1.9.15p6). In
608 older versions bugs in Samba meant you still would have had problems.
610 If you have a trapdoor uid system in your OS then it will never work
611 properly. Samba needs to be able to switch uids on the connection and
612 it can't if your OS has a trapdoor uid system. You'll know this
613 because Samba will note it in your logs.
615 Also note that you should not use the magic "homes" share name with
616 products like these, as otherwise all users will end up with the same
617 home directory. Use \\server\username instead.
619 <sect1>Problem with printers under NT<p> <label id="nt_printers">
621 This info from Stefan Hergeth
622 hergeth@f7axp1.informatik.fh-muenchen.de may be useful:
624 A network-printer (with ethernetcard) is connected to the NT-Clients
625 via our UNIX-Fileserver (SAMBA-Server), like the configuration told by
626 Matthew Harrell harrell@leech.nrl.navy.mil (see WinNT.txt)
628 1.) If a user has choosen this printer as the default printer in his
629 NT-Session and this printer is not connected to the network
630 (e.g. switched off) than this user has a problem with the SAMBA-
631 connection of his filesystems. It's very slow.
633 2.) If the printer is connected to the network everything works fine.
635 3.) When the smbd ist started with debug level 3, you can see that
637 NT spooling system try to connect to the printer many times. If
639 printer ist not connected to the network this request fails and
641 NT spooler is wasting a lot of time to connect to the printer
643 This seems to be the reason for the slow network connection.
645 4.) Maybe it's possible to change this behaviour by setting different
646 printer properties in the Print-Manager-Menu of NT, but i didn't try
649 <sect1>Why are my file's timestamps off by an hour, or by a few hours?<p>
650 <label id="dst_bugs">
652 This is from Paul Eggert eggert@twinsun.com.
654 Most likely it's a problem with your time zone settings.
656 Internally, Samba maintains time in traditional Unix format,
657 namely, the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 Universal Time
658 (or ``GMT''), not counting leap seconds.
660 On the server side, Samba uses the Unix TZ variable to convert
662 timestamps to and from local time. So on the server side, there are
666 1. The Unix system clock must have the correct Universal
668 Use the shell command "sh -c 'TZ=UTC0 date'" to check this.
670 2. The TZ environment variable must be set on the server
671 before Samba is invoked. The details of this depend on the
672 server OS, but typically you must edit a file whose name is
673 /etc/TIMEZONE or /etc/default/init, or run the command `zic
676 3. TZ must have the correct value.
678 3a. If possible, use geographical time zone settings
679 (e.g. TZ='America/Los_Angeles' or perhaps
680 TZ=':US/Pacific'). These are supported by most
681 popular Unix OSes, are easier to get right, and are
682 more accurate for historical timestamps. If your
683 operating system has out-of-date tables, you should be
684 able to update them from the public domain time zone
685 tables at URL:ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/.
687 3b. If your system does not support geographical time
689 settings, you must use a Posix-style TZ strings, e.g.
690 TZ='PST8PDT,M4.1.0/2,M10.5.0/2' for US Pacific time.
691 Posix TZ strings can take the following form (with
695 StdOffset[Dst[Offset],Date/Time,Date/Time]
699 `Std' is the standard time designation
702 `Offset' is the number of hours behind UTC
704 Prepend a `-' if you are ahead of UTC, and
705 append `:30' if you are at a half-hour offset.
706 Omit all the remaining items if you do not use
707 daylight-saving time.
709 `Dst' is the daylight-saving time designation
712 The optional second `Offset' is the number of
713 hours that daylight-saving time is behind UTC.
714 The default is 1 hour ahead of standard time.
716 `Date/Time,Date/Time' specify when
718 time starts and ends. The format for a date
720 `Mm.n.d', which specifies the dth day (0 is
722 of the nth week of the mth month, where week 5
724 the last such day in the month. The format
726 time is [h]h[:mm[:ss]], using a 24-hour clock.
728 Other Posix string formats are allowed but you don't
732 On the client side, you must make sure that your client's clock and
733 time zone is also set appropriately. [[I don't know how to do this.]]
734 Samba traditionally has had many problems dealing with time zones, due
735 to the bizarre ways that Microsoft network protocols handle time
736 zones. A common symptom is for file timestamps to be off by an hour.
737 To work around the problem, try disconnecting from your Samba server
738 and then reconnecting to it; or upgrade your Samba server to
739 1.9.16alpha10 or later.
741 <sect1> How do I set the printer driver name correctly? <p>
742 <label id="printer_driver_name">
745 > On NT, I opened "Printer Manager" and "Connect to Printer".
746 > Enter "\\ptdi270\ps1" in the box of printer. I got the
747 > following error message:
749 > You do not have sufficient access to your machine
750 > to connect to the selected printer, since a driver
751 > needs to be installed locally.
755 In the more recent versions of Samba you can now set the "printer
756 driver" in smb.conf. This tells the client what driver to use. For
759 printer driver = HP LaserJet 4L
761 and NT knows to use the right driver. You have to get this string
764 To find the exact string to use, you need to get to the dialog box in
765 your client where you select which printer driver to install. The
766 correct strings for all the different printers are shown in a listbox
769 You could also try setting the driver to NULL like this:
771 printer driver = NULL
773 this is effectively what older versions of Samba did, so if that
774 worked for you then give it a go. If this does work then let me know
775 and I'll make it the default. Currently the default is a 0 length
778 <sect>Specific client application problems<p> <label id="client_problems">
780 <sect1>MS Office Setup reports "Cannot change properties of "\MSOFFICE\SETUP.INI"<p>
781 <label id="cant_change_properties">
783 When installing MS Office on a Samba drive for which you have admin
784 user permissions, ie. admin users = username, you will find the
785 setup program unable to complete the installation.
787 To get around this problem, do the installation without admin user
788 permissions The problem is that MS Office Setup checks that a file is
789 rdonly by trying to open it for writing.
791 Admin users can always open a file for writing, as they run as root.
792 You just have to install as a non-admin user and then use "chown -R"
795 <sect>Miscellaneous<p> <label id="miscellaneous">