Mac OS X 10.4: SMB connection problems, solutions

Some users experience issues connecting to SMB (Samba) shares under Mac OS X 10.4 -- usually resultant in error -36.

Solutions

Changing the SMB configuration file MacFixIt reader Jim reports that changing a line in the smb.conf (configuration) file to be uncommented resolves the issue in his case.

Jim writes:

"I've solved my Samba problems - it seems Tiger is sending encrypted passwords. If Samba isn't configured to receive them, Tiger can't log in.

"In smb.conf, the line:

• encrypt passwords = yes

"must be uncommented (make sure there is not a ";" at the beginning of the line).

The smb.conf file is located at /usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf.

You can access the smb.conf file in the terminal via the command:

• sudo vi /etc/smb.conf

which will open smb.conf in the text editing utility "vi".

Re-establishing keychain passwords Resetting keychain passwords (deleting then re-entering them) can resolve some SMB networking issues introduced by Mac OS X 10.4. We've since received several notes of confirmation for the fix.

MacFixIt reader Stewart writes:

"I could connect to other Windows machines successfully under Tiger, however, with one particular Windows machine, I get the following error:  'The finder cannot complete the operation because some data in 'smb://(windows machine' could not be read or written  Error Code -36 )'."

"It was Keychain. I reset my keychain and everything worked. I can now logon to a share in that windows machine. I had copied the keychain from Panther to Tiger installation for my main user. I found this by logging into another user on my Mac and found that I could connect to a share ( and this one had the default tiger keychain ). I found the keychain item that was problematic, removed it and now everything is fine."

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