NEVER use Linux x64 + SAMBA for MS-DOS client

Hi all,

First of all, welcome again all. This will be my first blog here in English. By doing so, I hope this blog will not only help Indonesian foxer but also all foxer in the world.

So here it goes; as the title says: NEVER use Linux x64 + SAMBA for MS-DOS client. See, I've been using ubuntu 12.04 + samba 3 as a file server for my Point-of-Sales DOS based application. It works well. Recently, I tried to upgrade the system with ubuntu 14.04 (LTS) x64. I thought, the machine is Core 2 Duo Q9400 and 4gigs RAM. So, why not using 64 bit version instead of old 32 bit version? The installation went well, and samba seem to worked okay. Problem arouse when my POS system tried to read the samba folder. My POS application simply hung there. My log file stated that the faulty line was the line with ADIR() function in FPD26. Confused, I tried to put DIR from DOS prompt only to find that DOS shows the file in an endless loop. In a confusion I switched the system back to the backup server (Yes! This is important. Always have backups --- including server backup). For almost two hours I tried to find what went wrong and found nothing. So I re-format the server and switch back to 12.04.4 LTS 32 bit. Worked like a charm. I didn't know what went wrong until this morning. I tried to install the same ISO (14.04LTS x64) in my development machine virtualbox. Got the same error. A search on the net got me to https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10341 . So the story is clear now. No wonder I couldn't get MS DOS to connect to Samba that day. I was fighting bugs. If it were my apps bug, I would certainly find it. But if it is an operating system or system bug? Well, just stay out :)

Hope this post helps anyone having the same problem. See you all......