Samba Wierdness

Do you get the following annoying error when connecting to a Linux box with Samba Shares from a Mac running OSX 10.4 and above?

Well, the problem is with the enumeration of Samba groups with version 3.0.14 of Samba, which is what you get with Fedora Core 4. Windows boxes handle it ok, probably because they have to be able to handle really old versions of Samba on their network, but Macs hang. (Or at least the mount -t smbfs process hangs.)

So, what's the cure? Well, it's a little complicated. You'll need the following:

• A web browser (or wget or similar);
• root access to the linux box;
• At least one glass of wine/beer or other beverage of your choice;
• Cardboard cutouts or action figures of Steve Jobs and the Red Hat Developers (Why isn't there an action figure of Steve Jobs? With the inbuilt Reality Distortion Field and the +2 Charisma roll when he's presenting cool new technology?)
• A baseball bat; Cricket bats are an acceptable subsitute for those regimes where baseball is not played. Other alternatives, such as hurleys or edged weapons are also suitable. Note that Japanese are allowed to use both edged weapons *and* baseball bats in a sen no sen stance.)
• A glass of wine/beer or other beverage of your choice. (Well, you'll probably need more than one.)

Here's what you need to do:

1. On the linux box, point your browser at http://us3.samba.org/samba/ftp/Binary_Packages/Fedora/RPMS/i386/core/4/.
2. Download all the files there
3. Drink your beverage while waiting for the files to download.
4. Idly thwack your cardboard cutouts/actions figures with your weapon of choice as if to say, "one of you guys has got it coming later"
5. Upgrade your samba packages: rpm -Uvh samba-*
6. Have another sip of your beverage while this is happening.
7. Taunt cutouts/figures a second time.
8. restart samba: /etc/init.d/samba restart
9. Switch to your Mac (you may need to wear a stylish beret/shades/ponytail when using the Mac) and browse samba shares on your linux box.
10. Viola! (err, that's a big fiddle, sorry) Voila! your shares are now visible on the Mac!
11. Firmly thwack both the Jobs *and* redhat cutouts/figures for not solving this simple problem with simple updates.
12. Raise your remaining beverage in a toast to the samba guys for actually fixing the problem in the first place.