Monthly Archives: June 2010

SME Server and Samba

Working a bit with two new SME servers in the past week and creating additional configuration of Samba as a part of this.  There have been a number of things I needed to mess with to get it working how I wanted.

First up SME server 7.5 & 8.0b5 still have an inconsistency with the templating process.

Normally the compilation of a file from the template fragments follows the logical path of the resultant file, i.e.

/etc/httpd/httpd.conf file

is built from the

/etc/e-smith/templates/etc/httpd/httpd.conf/

directory with the template fragments within it.

The Samba smb.conf file lives within the /etc/samba directory

/etc/samba/smb.conf

but is compiled from the

/etc/e-smith/templates/etc/smb.conf

location which is inconsistent but having read through http://bugs.contribs.org it would appear that this has been left alone for quite some years as ok. Minor annoyance for me.

The next bit is trying to get a new share setup for general use and multi user access to a QuickBooks data file.

Creating a new template fragment

{

$OUT .= <<HERE;

[newsharename]
comment = Data files for my group
path = /home/e-smith/files/data
create mask = 0770
force group = mygroupsname
guest ok = yes
writable = yes
browseable = yes

HERE

}

Ok, next I expand the template and restart smb service.

#/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/smb.conf

#service smb restart

Which all appears to work nicely with new files created with the groupname set so that any group member can get to the files they want to open. The only thing I cannot work out is why the exceute bit is not set for the group, i.e. the file mask is -rwxrw—- (0760) rather than -rwxrwx— (0770)  but it does not appear to impact on anything.

Passwords for Netgear Wireless Router error

I installed a new Netgear router yesterday and discovered that when I changed the default password I could no longer access the unit.

I’ve been like this before and I think that I may have dumped a D-link modem under similar circumstances, however I stray from the topic.

It dawned on me after a while that because I like strong passwords I frequently include special characters that it might be the special character that was the issue. So I experimented and confirmed my thoughts.

Using special characters like % sign will act as an escape character which means both it and the next character will be treated as special and effectively ignored.

Example:

New password = %password
Actual recorded password = assword

Now I did not test this in the middle of a password but I am guessing it will be the same.

Bottom line is that when doing password changes in a Netgear and including special characters be aware that it may escape the characters making it appear that you cannot login when all you need to do is remove the escape’d characters from the password.