Macadamia

Okay.

Problem.

There's many different versions of SMB. Panther is built to support the latest version-- SMB for W2K/WXP.

Solution. If you are trying to browse a domain, you need to turn on Active Directory browsing, and yo might need to bind the computer to the domain, depending on the security settings of the domain.
(Use Active Directory setup in Directory Access.)

If you aren't trying to browse a domain, set the workgroup in Directory Access.

Problem.

Panther uses shadow passwords universally (yay!). Jaguar did not. (boo.)

Test. Run NetInfo Manager, browse to /users/YOU/passwd, where YOU is your login. The entry for your password should be "*******". If it is line noise -- something like "H381kehg9", then you still have the old hash password. Fast fix? Change your password, then check in Netinfo.

Lastly. Cache corruption (or, in this case, cache invalidation -- you've cached old information.) Panther Cache Cleaner, deep cleaning.

Or just pay for Dave. But $119 is a good step towards ANPB (A New PowerBook.)

Is this a PITA? Yes. But getting non-Windows machines to work with Windows machine has always been iffy -- hell, getting Win32 machines (Win95,98,98SE,ME) to work with NT machine (NT/W2k/WXP/W2003) has often been painful. The SMB Master Browser is just such an amazingly annoying thing that I often give up on it -- typing \\MACHINE\FOO, \\domain\machine\foo or \\machine.domain\foo is far more reliable (Which version depends on what OS is involved.) Of course, you need to have a mental map of the domain, so this isn't a browser fix.

Oh, one more thing. URIs changed slightly. Samba/Panther now follows the Microsoft convention. So, if you were accessing something by this form under Jaguar...

smb://username:password@domain/server/sharename

...you'd lose. For panther, you'd need...

smb://username:password@server.domain/sharename

Note the subtle difference. This makes Samba/Panther act like Windows AD clients (and, incidentally, like everything else on the net, where machines are machine.subdomain.domain.tld, but I digress,) where machines are always specified as server.domain, not domain/server. So, if you were doing //home/server/c-drive, you'd need //server.home/c-drive instead.

Really, honestly, truly, finally, Apple has admitted real problems with SMB and 10.3/10.3.1. Current public fix is to update to 10.3.2. How well that will work, I don't know.

Ah, the geeks of the night, how sweet they sing...

I knew, when I saw there was a reply for Alison, that it would be Eric (or possibly Dr P).
I'm glad I know my friends as well as I do.

Sue (techno luddite).

that it would be Eric

Who's he? ;-)

This is interesting. I read this and and thought "it must be be something she's doing wrong. I haven't had any trouble, in fact I can now print to my Windows printer which I never to used to be able to do (and in fact this was the main reason I went to Panther, so I'd have been really pissed off if it didn't work)".

Any way, yesterday, everything went suddenly screwy on the Windows sharing/Samba front. Couldn't see the Windows machines, couldn't see the Linux Samba share, general weird stuff going on. It could see the NAS box, sometimes, but usually it was messed up. I put the packet sniffer on and could see that the Powerbook was failing to talk Netbios properly - it just seemed to be doing broadcasts instead of authenticating.

The only thing I changed recently was to put fast user switching on (no real reason, I just wanted to see my name up in the top right hand corner). So I turned it off, logged out then back in. The problem's gone away.

So I suggest, on the evidence, that there's a bug in fast user switching (which I assume you're using since you said that was the main reason *you* went to Panther).

Steve

Huh. So what do I do now? DAVE is installed, but actually hasn't cured the problem completely (it sees shares sometimes but not always). Turning off FUS is pretty impractical while we only have one Mac (boo).

I suppose I could uninstall DAVE, try the steps Erik outlines above, and see if that helps. My password does seem to be a text string as described. I don't know where to set the workgroup in Directory Access. I would certainly prefer not to buy Dave if I can save the money.

Oh I'm so wet and girly.

Well, there's this: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/topic/43570-1.html which offers some ideas.

This comment started out a lot longer, but I definitely think it's a Panther problem. Try logging out and back in. Open Finder and go to folder /private (using Shift-Option-G). Follow the directories down to var/automount/Network/ (ignore ). Is your Samba share in that folder? Can you connect using it?

I think that this may be yet another aspect of Bug 3519134 (as documented on http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/panther/bugs.html).

P.S. Can I show you my rapidly growing collection of Finder crash logs?

It's sufficiently buggy it almost feels like W*nd*ws.

Yes, interestingly, by navigating there you can see the shares, even when the Finder browse isn't spotting them. I wonder if I can drop the relevant directories into my favourites directory and then not worry about the Finder network browse. Ooh, looks as if they're there already.

I'm still using Dave, though -- and Finder network browse isn't 100% reliable even then.

Strange. When I got my 15 inch lcd imac and OS X, I had never owned a mac before, but had 18 pc's around the house on 100 megabit ethernet, and (pre jaguar) I was using Sharity because apple's windows networking with smb seemed about 10 times slower at file transfers.
When I got Jaguar, and installed it, in the finder I just select Go->Connect to server and when the box comes up with the server address I type in
cifs://machine-name/sharename
add it to my favorites and click Connect and it works fine,
with win2k machines (desktop and laptop ibm thinkpad T21), and windows XP desktop, and a windows 98 ibm thinkpad 600E. Either I use the name, or I can even use the
IP number of the pc if I want
cifs://192.168.0.43/e
shares drive E on a pc downstairs which is a raid array
using 6, 60 gig maxtor drives and a promise sx6000 ide
6-way raid controller. (compusa was having a sale :)
It works fine, I've never had a glitch, it's fast, and the same thing works exactly the same way in Panther.
I just last week bought a 17 inch g4 powerbook, and out of the box, after setting up networking I did the same thing,
Go->Connect to server
cifs://Raid-01/e
and there's my raid drive from the windows machine on
my desktop.

I've tested the browse button, but I have never used it, since I know the names and IP numbers of all the machines and I don't use DHCP inside the house so the IP numbers don't change in any case.

Possible differences, my username and password on my mac and my pc's is the same. All the pc's are in the same
workgroup, I'm not using any of microsoft's domain controller stuff.

But it does work, well and robustly and quickly. I have
literally moved dozens of terabytes through the network
from and to my mac, as I digitize a lot of tv shows from
satellite tv. (Mostly science shows, tech-tv, discovery-science channel, some Food-TV [Iron Chef !] :) , any bad
old B-movie sci-fi from the 1950's and 60's I find on, etc.)
So all the machines and networks are humming day and night digitizing and encoding video all directed from my mac which is now my main machine for everything.

I know it is very frustrating when anyone posts a problem about practically anything on the web somewhere and gets many responses from people saying "it works fine for me". That doesn't help your problem or make you feel any better if it won't work on your computer.

The only things that I can think of that I've been told by many friends that is different is, I don't use DHCP in the house, (I don't like machines moving around and changing IP numbers on me, and there is simply no need for it), and I'm not using any of the microsoft domain controller crap, and my username and passwords are the same, and I'm not typing smb:// because it was so slow pre-jaguar it was unusable. Which was why I bought Sharity. Then jaguar came out and Sharity wouldn't run under it, and I was very worried, similar to you perhaps, what was I going to do? I can't use smb:// it's too slow. I investigated and decided
to use cifs instead, though now with panther, (I've upgraded and don't have jaguar machine to test, both macs are panther now), there doesn't seem to be much difference between smb and cifs.

Good luck.