Well, I have finally taken a few minutes out of a weekend to track downthe cause of an annoyance lingering in the syslog of my NAS server. A file server where I host both NFS and SMB/CIFS resources. The annoying entry in my logs was the following:
——————— samba Begin ————————
Unmatched Entries
smbd/service.c:make_connection_snum(938) Can’t become connected user! : 3049 Time(s)
———————- samba End ————————-
This is the output of my nightly logwatch report. Basically, the message, “Can’t become connected user!”, was being generated approximately every 60 seconds.
I started out the day doing a few Internet searches, but to no avail. I finally decided to get out tcpdump and iptraf to take a look at what was going on. In looking at this data, I was able to determine that the traffic was originating from a Windows 7 computer on my network.
After looking at the network services on the offending system, I noticed that the Windows 7 HomeGroup feature was enabled. As part of my troubleshooting, I disabled this since it is a Windows 7 only technology. I also had no intention of setting up a a HomeGroup on my network. _place_holder; Since I did not want it enabled in the first place, I did not take the time to try and make it co-exist peaceably with Samba on my network. I merely disabled the HomeGroup services using the services console (services.msc).
After a few clicks, the HomeGroup was disabled and my Samba server ceased recording the offensive “Can’t become connected user!” log entry every 60 seconds.