Samba Issue, Culprit is Windows 7 HomeGroup

Well, I have finally taken a few minutes out of a weekend to track down the 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.  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.