Samba server syncs smbpasswd file with unix user passwords even though the option is turned off

[Moritz Reiter]

Hi list,

I am running a samba server on hardy server edition. I installed samba 
via tasksel.

There is one strange thing with: The samba server seems to be syncing 
its smbpasswd file with the unix shadow password file even though the 
according option is turned off. The behavior is like this: When I set 
the samba password of my user on the server with smbpasswd, I am able to 
login to my shares with the password I just set. But when I want to 
access the shares a few minutes later with the very same password I get 
a 'permission denied' and now I can login with the unix password of the 
user on the server.

I don't want the samba password to be the same as the password of the 
unix user because I want to store the samba password in a plain text 
credentials file on the client machine as this is the only way I know to 
mount samba shares via fstab without being prompted for a password.

Here's some testparm out which shows that the unix password sync option 
is really turned off:

mo at mir:~$ sudo testparm -sv /etc/samba/smb.conf|grep "unix password sync"
Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf
Processing section "[homes]"
Processing section "[media]"
Loaded services file OK.
Server role: ROLE_STANDALONE
         unix password sync = No

I looked into the samba logs as well but as I'm not a samba expert at 
all I well might have overlooked something. If you need more output or 
log file content to help me, please let me know. I would very much 
appreciate any hints on whats going on.

Thanks for reading,
-- 
Moritz Reiter <verwertungsprozess at gmail.com>