Hello everyone,

 

I'm experiencing a recent issue where I can no longer properly access my SMB network shares.

I already tried to ask this question at the German forums, but as I wasn't able to find a solution there I am seeking for help here.

There is a thread with a very similar problem by @Revan335 but as far as I can see the root cause for his problem seemed to be the folder permissions. Those seem to be set right in my case, so I am opening a new thread.

 

Symptoms:

• Previously, all shares were set to Private, now no users can access private shares (even if they have permissions)
• When switching to Secure, I can connect again under Linux (Debian 12) and Android, but only with read permissions (despite write permissions being set for the respective user)
• Under Windows, I can no longer mount the shares, even when adding the user in the credential manager as a Windows user (deleted all other users). If I disable Windows group policies according to the guide linked in the latest version's changelog, I can connect again but only have read permissions like in Linux. For me it seems like all useres are treated as guests.
• The missing write permissions apply to both the root directory and subdirectories. Randomly checked shares are all affected, including the newly created "test" share
• When setting a share to Public, I have write permissions - but I absolutely don't want to keep it that way...

 

When did the problem start?

The Unraid server recently crashed for unknown reasons (still powered on but unreachable) and couldn't boot from the USB stick anymore. I then restored a backup (three days old at the time) to a new (unused) USB2 stick, transferred the license, and immediately updated from 6.9.13 to 6.9.14 after starting. That's when I first noticed these symptoms. I'm quite certain the shares were working at the time of the backup.

 

What have I tried?

• Multiple server and client system restarts
• Testing with different client machines (Windows 10 Edu, Windows 11 Pro, Android 13, Debian 12)
• Downgrade to 6.9.13
• Restored the backup again, this time without updating
• Changed the (previously working) SMB settings
• Accessing via hostname or IP address
• Deleted all credentials to the server in Windows and ran 'net use * /del' command and set the credentials like mentioned in the guide by @Frank1940
• Set server signing = auto in the SMB Extra settings
• Upgrade to 7.0.0-Beta4 (where I am now)
• Created three shares for testing purposes as well as a new user 'test'. The symptoms are identical
  • Share 'test' on my array of two HDDs + one parity Disk
  • Share 'test_SSD' on my pool of two SSDs (RAID 1)
  • Share 'Test_Virtual' on a pool of a single virtual disk

 

Notes:

• I'm using Unraid in Proxmox with the SATA controller passed through via PCIe. This has been working fine for a few months. I don't suspect Proxmox to be the problem in my case, as the problem doesn't stick to the physical discs which would have indicated a problem with PCIe passthrough. I therefore post in the 'General Support' section. If I am doing wrong please move this thread to the correct section.
• I only installed Nextcloud AIO as Docker container, and these containers don't access the affected shares. There are no VMs inside of Unraid.
• The old USB3 stick is still untouched. Windows shows filesystem errors but can read the data, so if there is anything on this stick that might help I should be able to retrieve it.
• Another user in this forum seemed to have similar problems due to their BTRFS filesystem, but I'm using XFS. The fact that public shares are writable would also seem to argue against filesystem errors. To me, it looks like all users are being treated as guests.

 

I greatly appreciate any help or ideas, as I seem to be stuck on my own... Thank you in advance!

 

 

Output of the ls -la commands (family names covered):

 

SMB Settings:

 

Settings of one of my shares:

 

Array and pools:

Show us screenshots of the output of the    ls -la    command for the     /mnt/user/test     directory and one or two of the sub-directories (if you have any) of the 'test' directory.

The output is shown in the screenshot attached.

The first sub-directory was created a few days ago via SMB set to public. I renamed it and created a second one right now via the web-ui of unraid.

Now for some really stupid questions---😁

 

You have a Share Access user setup on Unraid named 'test'?

 

This 'test' user is the only one that might be used from your Windows PC?  The reason for this question is that you are showing -seven-  Share Access users on your screen shot for the 'test' share.)

 

You have a credential setup in Windows Credential Manager named 'test' with the same credentials as on your Unraid server.

 

That is on the only credential for the server on your Windows computer?

 

The reason for these questions is that SMB/Samba is a 'black box'  for most of us.  We only know how it works by probing it and seeing what happens as a result of our probes...

I created the 'test'-user only for testing purposes after the problem occured. I used this user on three different windows machines after deleting the credentials that were there before.

Five of the other users are used on different Windows-machines by me and my family (, too). Two users are only used to connect Linux Machines (Proxmox & a Debian 12 LXC Container).

Unfortunately most of the windows machines are bound to a microsoft account, so I had to enter the users via the credentials manager.

So the windows computer that you are using with the 'test' credential user also has a Unraid Share Access user login using the Microsoft account credentials.  Here is the help for the Unraid 'Add user' tab:

 

Notice that '@' are not an allowed character.   If your Microsoft Account uses the email address as a login name, that could be the problem.  (Windows SMB has a number of things tries to establish a login and I am not sure where the Microsoft account is in the sequence.  I do not use a Microsoft account so I am not that famiiar with it.) 

 

I am going to ping @dlandon and see if he has any thoughts at this point...

Edited December 9, 20241 yr by Frank1940

I am sorry, I have not expressed myself clearly. The windows machines use a microsoft account for logging into windows, but that account is not used for SMB.

The SMB-users (which only consist of lower case letters) have been added via the credentials manager in Windows like stated in your PDF-manual.

It worked fine this way for a few months until my server crashed once and I restored the USB-stick.

55 minutes ago, drevel123 said:

It worked fine this way for a few months until my server crashed once and I restored the USB-stick.

 

On the that USB-stick, look in the     /config   directory.  Then look at the   passwd     smbpsswd    and     shadow    files with a text editor.     They are standard text files and each is really a table of various parameters.  (The separator is a ':' and a bit of googling will find out what each parameter is for.)   Make sure all of your users are in all three files.  The fact that you had a crash and then things stopped working correctly may mean that there is a problem in one of these files.  

 

As I recall, you can rename (or delete) all three of these files and Unraid will create them on the next reboot.  (When in one of these situations, I just add the extension .old to the end of the filename.) Of course, you will have to enter all of the information again. 

Edited December 9, 20241 yr by Frank1940

The passwd as well as the shadow files contain rows for each of my users. The smbpasswd file on the other hand only contains one row beginning with 'root'.

 

I moved those into another directory and booted the server. As you said I will have to recreate all users, I only did so with the 'test' user so far.

But as far as I can see, everything seems to be working with this newly created user  I have write acces on 'secure' shares and can access 'private' shares as before the crash!

 

I will do some testing with different users and systems the day after tomorrow (I am quite busy tomorrow). If everything works as expected, I will mark your answer as the solution to my problem (as I don't know wether it would be possible to take it back if problems persist?)

 

Anyway: thank you very much so far for your quick and helpful answers! 

I recreated all users and set permissions as they were before the crash.
Everything is working just fine, again - wether on Windows, Linux or Android. So there was indeed something off with these files or deleting them triggered something else to reset. It's a pity I may never know the real problem, but for now a working system is all that counts. I just hope this won't occur again in the future.

 

Anyway: Thank you very much, again!