From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0b; Windows NT 5.0; IUL) Description of problem: Samba is set up to run as domain controller for a domain of 4 Win98 workstations (also running as WINS server). About 90% of the time, domain logins will fail with a password invalid or unable to connect to server error. It doesn't seem to be a problem with the server being misconfigured or not running, as sometimes one or two users will be able to get in fine and the others not. If the users keep trying to log in over a period of say 1/2 hour, eventually they will all be able to log in successfully. How reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot windows system, domain login prompt comes up 2. Enter any valid username and password 3. login error comes up 4. repeat 1-3 at random intervals for 1/2 to 3/4 hour and eventually login will succeed. Actual Results: about 5-10% of the time the login will succeed the first time, the other 90-95% of the time login attempt must be repeated over and over before successful login is gained. Expected Results: Login should have been successful the first time. Additional info: If users shutdown their machine and reboot right away and then log in again, they *seem* so far to be successful at logging in again without error. But if they shutdown their machine overnight it is almost guaranteed they will fail in the morning. Have clicked cancel at the login prompt and dropped through to windows and done check to verify that indeed they have a valid IP and can ping the server.
Anything useful in the logs?
There was nothing of any use in the logs I'm afraid. After trolling for answers on several Samba sites, I was able to "resolve" the problem by just upgrading to a current version of Samba. I was told by several people that the 2.0.x versions of Samba were far less stable than the current 2.2.x tree... this has proven to be true, after upgrading I have not had a problem.
Current rawhide release is 2.2-based (2.2.1a-3 shortly), closing