Windows SBS 2003 & Macintosh

I have two problems: I need to allow a Mac OS 10.3.4 client to share files with Small Business Server 2003, and I need the Mac client running Entourage to be able to add an Exchange account.

Problem # 1:

According to the Small Business Server 2003's Administrative handbook, Mac OS 10.3.x and above have out-of-the-box support for connecting to Windows file shares. The procedure to connect to a share is as follows:

In the Finder window, choose the Go menu, and choose Connect to Server. For the server's address, enter smb://domain;servername/share (for me this is smb://company.lan;companysrv1/public). After entering this information, the SMB/CIFS File System Authentication window appears, and it has correctly pulled in my domain's name (company.lan). It is asking for a username and a password. I have created this user an account on the server, so I enter his username and password, but it says one of them is incorrect. I know I am entering the information correctly. I then read an article that said the password should be less than 8 characters, so I changed his password to 6 characters. I still receive the same error message. Any ideas?

Problem # 2:
What do I need to do to allow him to create an Exchange account in his Entourage software? Are there additional services or configurations that need to be running on the server? He can try to add an Exchange account now, but after it asks for the Exchange server's address and his authentication information, it says there was an error with the MAPI server and it could not connect:

An error Occurred on the IMAP server.
The Specified Server could not be found.
Error -3260

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

I haven't used a Mac for many years, so hopefully you may get some more "informed" suggestions after this.

I am currently having fun working on a third party network where they have an old SCO server running Samba. Windows 2000 and XP clients have difficulty connecting to the samba file shares due to these Windows systems using encrpyted password. I wonder if your problem has the same source. On XP/2000 clients you can go into security settings and Disable the password encryption, but in your case I'd search for a way to enable password encryption on the MAC.

In general I would suggest you use the IP address rather than the Server name when connecting to a Microsoft server from a non Microsoft system. That will effectively remove any name resolution problems.

Lastly it might be easiest to set up e-mail on the MAC for POP rather that IMAP.

 

RE: #1 - password: The default for passwords is probably 8 character minimum and some level of complexity. At least one capital alpha character and one numbeic character is usual.

You might want to run gpedit.msc and look at the computer settings unless you have a domain and policies set at that level.

 

Hi Newt,

Currently, there is no password policy set. There will be in the future, but I will not enable that policy until I have all users properly joined to the domain. So the password problem is not a conflict with the policy. I can log on to Windows-based machines with this user's username and password, I just can't get his Macintosh to connect to the shares with that same username and password.

Thanks,
Richard

 

With no domain policy, I was thinking maybe a specific machine had somehow gotten a local password policy set. It may not be even in the ballpark though. What I know about MACs could be stuffed into a very small thimble with lots of room left over.

Could you please post the exact and complete error the MAC gives when trying to connect. Also check the event logs on the SBS and see if there is more information there.

You say you can log onto Windows machines with the MAC account name/password. Can the windows machine then connect properly to the SBS share?

I think that once this connection issue is resolved the other one with needing the MAC to be able to create new accounts will be resolved as well.

 

I know I may be wrong, but the problem is still consistant with an encryption of password problem (that is the Mac not encrypting the password as expected by the server).