RE: [TCLUG:9768] samba problems

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> >On my system, 'file /etc/MACHINE.SID' returns:
> >/etc/MACHINE.SID: ASCII text
> >And the contents of the file look something like:
> >S-1-5-21-428541845-317371003-2878726185

>         aha. that would make sense, since I understand the SID to be some
> sort of program unique ID that gets checked over the network, to
> be sure you
> don't have multiple installs of the same license.
>         another case where corporate license issues cause a PITA for
> everyone else. ;(
>         another reason to stick with only GPL/BSD software, if possible.
>
>         now how does that number get generated?
>         can I use your number, and will it work?

First thing I'd try is remame MACHINE.SID to MACHINE.SID.old, and try
restarting samba or running some of the smb utilities to see if you can get
your machine to generate a new file.

Otherwise, I can't see any relation between my MACHINE.SID and my IP
address, MAC or anything else hardware-related, so just making one up may
work OK.  I suppose I could try looking this up, but...  nah.

Here's a SID taken from another machine on my network, for comparison:

S-1-5-21-3437738669-1793582610-2608226384

As you can see, the S-1-5-21 is the only obvious isomorphism.

Of course, if the MACHINE.SID is actually used as, say, an
encryption/decryption key or something else more mathematically significant
than a unique id, then you may run into some interesting problems...  Let us
know what you find out, I guess.