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Tiger plagued by SMB, Active Directory bugs

updated 12:45 pm EDT, Fri May 6, 2005

Tiger SMB, AD problems

A number of sites running Mac OS X "Tiger" are with SMB file sharing and authentication with Microsoft's Active Directory, eWEEK reports. Although Apple's Tiger increases support for Server Message Block file sharing and Active Directory, several sources say that the Finder fails to log on to Windows and Linux Samba file servers. With Active Directory, Tiger users with mobile accounts can log on once, but cannot log on again after disconnecting. "To be honest, without the machine being bound to AD and OD, [Tiger] is kind of useless for me in my environment," said Brad Anderson of The Marketing Store. An Apple representative said Apple was unaware of the problems: "We have not received any customer reports of issues with SMB in Tiger."

by MacNN Staff

(23)

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enterprise, servers

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aambrosino
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2005

0

05/06, 01:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
SMB Active Directory bug

I ran into this problem connecting to a windows 2000 server. I would receive a -36 error while trying to connect. After deleting my keychains, and retrying to connect it loging in with no error. I hope this helps.

itguy05
Forum Regular

Joined: Apr 2005

0

05/06, 01:25pm | report spam | close Reply |
Can't join either

Brought my PB in to use this week while my IBM is in the shop and tried binding to the AD domain and wouldn't work - errored on step 2 -finding DC. Even pointing to a DC wouldn't work.

However connecting manually has worked all week.

HowardG
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2001

0

05/06, 02:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
Possible Solution

Part of the problem may be that Samba is set to not use encrypted passwords by default.

Read more here: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20050505073128448

the Rebel
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2000

0

05/06, 02:47pm | report spam | close Reply |
Jumping the Gun

It is rather early to be claiming that Tiger is PLAGUED by SMB. This is hardly a PLAGUE.

For the vast majority of people using SMB with Tiger, it works just fine.

What is most interesting about this over zealous mischaracterization is that MacNN added it themselves. The referenced eWeek article does not call it a PLAGUE. The yellow journalists at MacNN exaggerated the situation for their own sensationalistic purpose.

kingyubba
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Joined: Mar 2005

0

05/06, 03:05pm | report spam | close Reply |
related to printing?

after upgrading to tiger i can't print to my non-IP printer connected to a windows PC... i get a NT_STATUS_NO_MEMORY error, then a "could not connect to SMB server" error... hopefully 10.4.1 or a patch will fix this. it's bothersome, but not the end of the world.

Ralf_Wiggum
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Joined: May 2002

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05/06, 03:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
What's most interesting

No, MacNN's characterization isn't the most interesting thing. The most interesting thing is how some dumba** can claim to know what "the vast majority of people" are experiencing. Have you conducted a random survey of OS X users, dork? No? Then how is YOUR characterization any more accurate?

This problem has been documented by many people at the leading Mac troubleshooting sites. For an Apple rep to say that the company is unaware of the problem is shameful

Drakino
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: Apr 2001

0

05/06, 03:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
Better beta testing?

Maybe things like this might convince Apple that if they want to expand more into the corporate market, they need to start getting some corporate beta testers, instead of just using their developers.

Copies of Longhorn are already at work available to any team that wants to test functionality now, and it's still at least a year off. Any bugs found can be submitted to Microsoft to have addressed.

ecrelin
Junior Member

Joined: Oct 2000

0

05/06, 03:25pm | report spam | close Reply |
Bizarre�

that people who publish must embellish?!? Maybe an agenda for their own importance, to offer their own "take", is required to want to be in this game. Instead of listing issues with real number of incidents and perhaps doing even the most cursory research to see if things are easily fixable or not, both of which would be desirable, helpful, and a compelling value add, they have to make the truth an esoteric exercise. As if that gains them any respect or voluntary readership, but that's Hollywood I guess?!? Excuse me ladies, didn't you see my "Press Pass", wooooo.

ecrelin
Junior Member

Joined: Oct 2000

0

05/06, 03:33pm | report spam | close Reply |
Drakino sucked in�

Developers and many sites were beta testing constantly, these are either known issues prior to release or very small numbers of individual incidents. Longshot is available now? Dream on, teeny pieces of Longhorn are available now like their PDF competitor, wanna bet it breaks more things than Tiger when it ships? How are those Service Packs doin', I'm sure they knew everything that was going to break before they issued them right? Hmmmmm?

Glasspusher
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2000

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05/06, 04:20pm | report spam | close Reply |
no problems here

I just set up my mac mini at work here and it can see all the Active Directory and other M$ servers here just fine

factorguy
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Joined: Jan 2005

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05/06, 04:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
Strange...

I just tried to logon to my Windows network here at work, and I'm happy to report no problems. Even better, my read/write to the Windows network is much much faster than it was under 10.3 and under. Under 10.3, a 2MB file would take forever to read or write. Even with Dave installed. On 10.4, it copies lightning fast.

Thanks Apple!

resuna
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2005

0

05/06, 04:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
You can't blame it reall

Windows Networking scares me, and I've had a decade longer to get used to it than poor old Tiger. No wonder the kitty's acting a bit passive-aggressive towards it.

Roehlstation
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

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05/06, 04:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Strange

Yes, I can log into my servers as well, but if you log on using SMB (the way you really should to ensure file naming integrity) does does that work for you? I can't get it to work for me right now.

klinux
Senior User

Joined: Jul 2002

0

05/06, 07:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
Nice argument ecrelin

Rather than ackonwledging that there may be a problem with xyz, sidetrack on how sucky Microsoft is.

Yeah, just as effective as saying your dog ate your homework.

Glasspusher
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2000

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05/06, 07:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Strange

I can log on using SMB. I would prefer not to have to deal with the dog that is M$, and Macs are making a nice beachead here where I work ;)

wrecklass
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Joined: Mar 2005

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05/06, 09:25pm | report spam | close Reply |
There are problems

After upgrading to Tiger I have found that using SMB to copy files to some of the PC's on my network is now as much as 10 times slower than it was before. Something is broken for sure.

Drakino
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: Apr 2001

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05/07, 01:49pm | report spam | close Reply |
Thanks klinux...

Amazing how I say Longhorn and part of my other comment was discredited. Buy anyhow, any employee of the company I work for can grab major beta builds of Longhorn and try it out, and it has been this way for over a year. Sure, parts of it aren't even complete yet, but the point is, the underlying core of things like basic network communication can be tested now. When other features are added. then bugs can be submitted there as well.

Tiger on the other hand was very limited to who had access to it. Developers don't always have all the time in the world to get their programs working, and also test other parts of the OS. If I personally had access to it back in beta, I would have loaded it on a firewire drive and seen what hurdles appeared that impacted how I work. The Active Directory thing is a big one, since it's what I usually bind to. I would have had bug reports submitted long ago.

But Apple chooses to be overly worried about their OS leaking in beta and would rather sue web sites and torrent users then actually ship a product that works out of the box and not a few minor releases (service packs) later. Who knows, maybe 10.4.1 will fix it, or 10.4.2, or .3...

Apple is making inroads into the corporate market. But most of that momentum is users switching at home and then talking about it at work. If Apple really wants to help the movement, they need to be more corporate friendly. And these days, that means playing in enviornments dominated by MS protocols. The Mail/iCal exchange support is still hideous, even though it was at least 2 or 3 of the 200+ new features in Tiger. And, well, the SMB bugs don't help.

chabig
Addicted to MacNN

Joined: Jun 1999

0

05/07, 04:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Longhorn beta?

I'm surprised you say that developers at your company have been able to get Longhorn betas for over a year--you must work for Microsoft. Because even Microsoft said at their recent Windows Hardware Engineering Conference that beta 1 isn't scheduled for release until June 30, 2005!

dynsight
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2005

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05/07, 06:40pm | report spam | close Reply |
Tiger is fine with SMB

I am using AD on Windows 2000 and Samba on Novelle/Suse 9..no problems. All of the userss (well, my wife and daughter and "guests" )home directories are on the Linux box, and no problem thus far. No problems with iTunes libraries and files on Linux, either.

I did notice one improvement though...

Used to be that if I logged into a Linux share from OS X and used an account that was not on my computer, keychair would not work properly. I had to authenticate on every connection.

This is not the case now. Keychain remembers the authentication, and I am not prompted for user name and password.

acraft
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2005

0

05/07, 08:15pm | report spam | close Reply |
Similar, Yet So Different

If you noticed, the eWeek article was cleverly titled with a question mark at the end:

Tiger Caged by SMB, Active Directory Problems?

MacNN copied the headline, replaced Caged with Plagued and dropped the question mark. Funny how such similar headlines can say such completely different things. The accurate headline, you will notice, comes from a news source with actual journalists.

the Rebel
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2000

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05/08, 12:02am | report spam | close Reply |
In regards to Ralf_Wiggum

I can accurately state that the vast majority of people using SMB with Tiger are not experiencing any problems.

Did I conduct an extensive survey? No, but there is no need for one.

First of all, the majority of the complaints mentioned in the eWeek article and in various Mac troubleshooting sites are related to Active Directory. Since the vast majority of people using SMB are NOT using Active Directory then obviously those alleged issues would not apply to the vast majority of people. Plus, add to that the fact that for every person who has posted a complaint about having SMB problems with Tiger there has been at least 2 people who have reported that Tiger's SMB is working fine for them.

I am using SMB with Tiger and am having no problems. Last weekend I upgraded 47 workstations to Tiger; they all use SMB and no one has complained once to me about any SMB related problems. There are various other people who have posted to this thread stating that SMB is working for them. All of the Mac troubleshooting forums have people stating that SMB is working for them.

Considering the fact that a person having problems with Tiger is exponentially more likely to post in a Mac troubleshooting forum than a person who is not having any problems, the relatively few complaints is a clear indication that any issues with Tiger's SMB are NOT widespread. If it was a plague upon Tiger and if the majority of people using Tiger's SMB were having problems, then there would be more than 21 posts in this thread because there would be a whole lot more people bitching about it and a whole lot less stating that it working for them.

BTW, LBNL, please refrain from name calling. It is just sad.

Drakino
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: Apr 2001

0

05/09, 01:33pm | report spam | close Reply |
no I don't work for MS

Longhorn Beta 1 is just a milestore, as have been the releases before it. Microsoft has released Longhorn to some developers starting at WinHEC 2004. and again a newer build this year at WinHEC 2005. Beta 1 is more of a "Most every major tech is in place, hammer on everything now" instead of the releases before where not everything is there.

The one from 2004 actually had a few places you would come across an "Under construction" graphic.

Willfon
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2005

0

05/15, 11:20am | report spam | close Reply |
I've seen it - it's ugl

Short summary of how it looks on the inflicted mac:

Automount spawns another automount which again spawns a mountsmbfs process. The mount process dies, taking with it the child automount process. The first automount process (the one with -fstab in the command string) spawns another automount process after 2 seconds or so. Repeat ad nauseam. Even after the user has logged off. I HUPed the automount process, and after that syslog and ps says the automount process is unresponsive.

As seen from the domain: The client computer tries to access the domain as the user root and this makes the domain lock for the transaction. The autentication as root fails of course, but the lock, try, fail and unlock takes about a second. Remember that the mac automount respawns and retries and this could happen for more than one mac at a time. As long as the macs are making enough noise, the AD admin might have problems getting a lock themselves to throw out the mac.

The larger the site, the greater chance of problems. We have some 400 macs, 250 using AD and about a hundred clients running 10.4 at the moment.

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Tiger plagued by SMB, Active Directory bugs

updated 12:45 pm EDT, Fri May 6, 2005

Tiger SMB, AD problems

SMB Active Directory bug

Can't join either

Possible Solution

Jumping the Gun

related to printing?

What's most interesting

Better beta testing?

Bizarre�

Drakino sucked in�

no problems here

Strange...

You can't blame it reall

Re: Strange

Nice argument ecrelin

Re: Strange

There are problems

Thanks klinux...

Longhorn beta?

Tiger is fine with SMB

Similar, Yet So Different

In regards to Ralf_Wiggum

no I don't work for MS

I've seen it - it's ugl

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Tiger plagued by SMB, Active Directory bugs

updated 12:45 pm EDT, Fri May 6, 2005

Tiger SMB, AD problems

Related Articles

Recent Articles

SMB Active Directory bug

Can't join either

Possible Solution

Jumping the Gun

related to printing?

What's most interesting

Better beta testing?

Bizarre�

Drakino sucked in�

no problems here

Strange...

You can't blame it reall

Re: Strange

Nice argument ecrelin

Re: Strange

There are problems

Thanks klinux...

Longhorn beta?

Tiger is fine with SMB

Similar, Yet So Different

In regards to Ralf_Wiggum

no I don't work for MS

I've seen it - it's ugl

Login Here

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