topic Re: "very old" SMB clients unable to access CDOT CIFS shares in Network and Storage Protocols

"very old" SMB clients unable to access CDOT CIFS shares

robirobs — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:13:28 GMT

Hi guys,

we recently migrated from 7-mode 8.1 to CDOT 9.1P8. Now we have issues with very old Linux/Irix/HP machines that they can't mount the CIFS shares via SMB. Errors are not really giving details on the client and the NetApp event log does not show errors either. E.g. at the IRIX I'm trying to access the share with smbclient 2.0.0 via "/usr/samba/bin/smbclient //ip/volume/qtree password -U user -W domain" and error says "session setup failed: code 0" ... ok, I did a few adjustments on smbclient and also tried to create a local SVM user to use for connection without success.

Then I've tried all possible vserver CIFS volume options and vserver cifs security options, tested after each change again without success. But when I disable SMB1 at least I'm then getting an error at client and NetApp event log.

Am I missing something, or is my new NetApp just incompatible with "very old" SMB version? Created a new vfiler on the old 8.1 NetApp - no issues.

Any help/advise appreciated 🙂

many thanks,

Robert

Re: "very old" SMB clients unable to access CDOT CIFS shares

AlexDawson — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 03:09:46 GMT

Hi there,

CIFS/SMB implementation and security requirements have changed a fair bit since Samba 2.0.0 was released in 1999 - but generally options can be changed to enable access from older clients, although there are often security and privacy trade-offs necessary.

First step would be to work through our CIFS authentication troubleshooting guide at https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1071815/loc/en_US and then review some of the articles at https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1001004/loc/en_US#__highlight

Hope this helps!

Re: "very old" SMB clients unable to access CDOT CIFS shares

SeanHatfield — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 07:22:28 GMT

Very old clients may not fully support unicode. Since Clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 only unicode clients have been supported.

https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1196891/html/GUID-681A90ED-CD1F-4BC7-9601-5DE2BC7311A5.html

Re: "very old" SMB clients unable to access CDOT CIFS shares

robirobs — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 12:36:39 GMT

This could indeed be the cause. Thanks Sean.