Windows 7 connect to Samba Domain

Windows 7 has some special requirements for it to become a member of a Samba based Windows domain.

I worked through a number options including trying the old Windows XP solution of changing the registry settings NetlogonParametersRequireStrongKey but this did not work.

There are also many mentions of the Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level change to “LM and NTLM – use NTLMV2 session security if negotiated” but that did not work on the two systems I have tried and after setting that back I changed just the two LANmanWorkstation settings as per this link.

http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Windows7

Worked fine with both an older Windows 7 downloaded installation and on my Windows7 notebook from TechEd AU 2009. But it failed on a Dell system that has been upgraded to Win7. Still working on that one.

An Update:

I updated the Samba version on the SMEServer that I was trying to connect to from Samba v3.0.33 to Samba v3.2.15 (using the sernet archive) and tried to connect the Dell notebook again using the modified registry settings as per this post and it worked first time.

SMEServer 6.0 SSL Certificate

I had the SSL Certificate expire on an older SME Server install during the week and went to fix it all this morning. I went looking for a quick set of instructions and used http://www.sme-server.de/download/Howtos/ssl.html which worked fine on the server.

Problem was that the Firefox browser on the workstation I worked from reported a duplicate certificate serial number had been identified and therefore the site was still blocked.

I had to clear the old certificate from the Tools->Options->Advanced->Encryption->View Certificates screen to get access working.

Sharepoint Menu and Navigation

The issue that I had was managing the menu’s at the top level of a Sharepoint site (site collection) and one of the sites within that collection.

The top level home page menu contained sites and then within the drop down option the subsites of those sites.

The issue was to hide a particular item from that drop down menu.

Editing the navigation options is the correct location. There are two ways to get to this

Sharepoint Site Settings Menu

which leads to the Site Settings page where you select Navigation from the Look and Feel column

Sharepoint Navigation tool

Alternatively just use the shortcut from the Site Actions ->Site Settings menu ->Modify Navigation

Sharepoint Site Settings

Once on this page there is a list of the navigation for the current site collection and you can hide or move items around.

The trick is with the option for Global Navigation

Selecting global navigation option

There are two options:

Display the same navigation items as the parent site
or
Display the navigation items below the current site.

The first option leaves the modification control only within the scope of the local site, while the second option adds the Global Navigation to the list for modification and allows for hiding or moving the global menu for this site.

I think, given my current limited Sharepoint knowledge, that this is due to the relationships within a site collection. The sites I am working with are within a single site collection. The top level menu takes up all the sites within it as the first menu level and sub-sites as the second level menu.  The options above are to either accept that the Global (site collection) Menu will display all the site/subsites or to have control passed to the site level and have the Global Navigation modified at site control level.

A home network SME Server and Synology NAS

My home network has consisted of a range of servers over the years. SME Server is one that I have consistently used for at least 7 years that I can recall and possible longer.

Currently I have an SME Server v7.3 server installed connected to the internet via a small dlink router gateway. Aside from the Windows workstations, notebooks, and iPhones that use the dlink wifi connection, I have a NAS device from Synology that I am very pleased with. DS207 model with 2 x 1T drives.

I am currently experimenting with controlling the underlying BusyBox Linux embedded system. I installed Samba SWAT but have yet to get the permissions working correctly and in the process manged to overwrite the samba config file so all my shares have been lost.

I’ve got more work to do on this one!