Samba problems with 10.5.7

[potenuse]

My mac based samba shares got variously screwed during the last update process and here's how I solved two problems:

 

PROBLEM 1 - "CONNECTION FAILED" ERROR MESSAGE WHEN ACCESSING ANOTHER COMPUTER

 

Basically the shared computer would show up in the sidebar of the finder (as it always had) but when I clicked on it I'd get the very useful "Connection failed" error message.

 

It would seem that something went screwy with my AFP settings during update. In any case recreating the symlink fixed it:

 

sudo rm /System/Library/Filesystems/afpfs.fs

sudo ln -s /System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/afpfs.kext /System/Library/Filesystems/afpfs.fs

 

PROBLEM 2 - SAMBA SHARES ARE VISIBLE BUT DISAPPEAR WHEN CLICKED ON IN FINDER

 

The shared folders themselves would show up in the finder and then disappear when I clicked on them.

 

After a lot of trial and error, I discovered the problem was caused by phantom samba shares in the /var/samba/shares/ folder. To fix this:

 

1) On the mac that hosts the disappearing shares open terminal and type

 

ls /var/samba/shares/

 

2) Now compare this to the list you see with finder from another mac

3) If the list you see in Step 1 is longer than in Step 2 remove the extra ones as follows:

4) Create an empty folder on the desktop with exactly the same name as the "phantom" share (in my case this was DATA-1)

5) Apple - I (for Infos) and share this folder (checkbox half way down)

6) Uncheck the box again and verify that the phantom share has vanished by doing step 1 again

7) Repeat until all phantoms are gone (then of course you can trash the empty folder on the desktop!)

 

I suspect that the phantom shares are causing the other to disappear through some sort of refresh bug - in any case, removing them solved it for me.

 

Cheers,

Potenuse

 

BTW the credit for the fix to PROBLEM 1 goes to someone from this thread:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=73334