[Voyage-linux] Voyage 5.2, Samba, using a clean readonly partition

[Nicolas Pillot]

Hello,

I have been using samba for a while now, and i'm running into a glich
i can't isolate. Symptom : after booting, appliance is in RO mode, and
i cannot log into the smb share i configured. Workaround : remountrw,
log into the share, remountro, then everything is fine. I'm tired of
using this workaround, and i think there should be some way to fix
this. Here's the stuff i managed to dig out tonight :

* When installing samba, i used an aptitude stanza, setup the password
(smbpasswd -a npillot) and configured samba using the following config
file :
[global]
workgroup = LAPIN
interfaces = 10.0.0.0/8,192.168.4.0/24
netbios name = ChickenBox
[Read]
path = /mnt/ext/shared/read
[Write]
read only = no
path = /mnt/ext/shared/write

* To re-enable mounting readonly, i had to do the following :
mkdir -p /ro/var/lib/samba/
mv /var/lib/samba/* /ro/var/lib/samba/
rmdir /var/lib/samba
ln -s /rw/var/lib/samba /var/lib/samba

* Now, after any reboot, the appliance comes up in RO mode

When trying to get into the "Read" share, a Wireshark dump tells me :
"SMB Session Setup AndX Response, Error: STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE"

Then grab the info : # lsof | grep '^.mbd' > ro.txt

* Then i remountrw, and when logging into the "Read" share, no error
and i can browse.

I grab the info : # lsof | grep '^.mbd' > rw.txt

* I can now remountro back, and go on browsing in the share (or even
go into "Write" share)

A "diff" from ro.txt (unsuccessful) and rw.txt (success) shows :
- the file /rw/var/run/samba/sessionid.tdb grew in size
- the file /rw/var/run/samba/locking.tdb grew in size
- a new smbd pid appeared in rw.txt, and a new file
/rw/var/run/samba/share_info.tdb appeared for this pid

Also please note that the shares are on an external usb drive, and
that i modifed the mountall.sh to get them mounted asap.

Any idea would be *greatly* appreciated :-)

-- 
Nicolas Pillot (nicolas.pillot at gmail.com)