smbclient -N --no-pass broken

[Skunk Worx]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:01:59 -0700, Skunk Worx wrote:
> 
>> Example :
>>
>> $ smbclient -A /tmp/foo -N //192.168.200.10/a_share -D / -c ls
>>
>> Where :
>> /tmp/foo contains :
>>
>> username=uname
>> password=pass
>>
>> Under F7 this worked fine. The -N (or --no-pass) option helps deal with 
>> broken credentials files (/tmp/foo) so no prompt is requested or shown. 
>> For example in scripts, which should not hang.
>>
>> Under F9 this fails with :
>> Anonymous login successful
>> Domain=[FOO] OS=[Windows 5.0] Server=[Windows 2000 Lan Manager]
>> tree connect failed : NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED
>>
>> I don't see anything in bugzilla about this. Should I bz or ask 
>> elsewhere about this?
> 
> Options -A and -N are unrelated. Both skip the password prompt to
> make smbclient non-interactive. -A because it can read the credentials
> from a file. -N because it is used when no password is needed (login
> as guest/nobody). Either one worked for you, but access to the share
> was denied. What do you think is the bug?
> 

I definitely think -A and -N are related, because :

1) Sometimes a credentials file has a username and no password. Without 
-N it prompts for the password; with -N it does not, and is suitable for 
a script, and should fail without prompting, whereas from the command 
line, as a test, it prompts, using the same credentials file either way.

2) If the credentials file is mangled, e.g; a sysadmin has misspelled 
'password=', -N prevents the broken -A file from hanging the script.

Today I found removing -N from the above example only improves things.

On F9 :
Adding the -N option causes 100% failure. Without the -N option, the 
example command works about 80% of the time. The other 20% of the calls 
give the "anonymous,tree connect,NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED" as described 
above.

On F7 :
Same scripts, same subnet, same server : 100% success.

Since mount -t cifs appears to be 100% reliable on F7 and F9, and 
supports credentials files, I plan on abandoning the smb tools and 
re-writing the scripts unless something changes very soon.

---
John