[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#556450: A guess at what happens, and a fix/workaround

[Helge Hafting]

I see the same problem.

Before, I could have a credential file that only root could read, and 
the mount would still succeed as a user
because the "mount" binary is SUID root.

I guess the mount binary changed, so it drops the
root privileges before trying to open the credential files.

One fix for this is to "chown" the credentials file so that it is
owned by the user running "mount" instead of "root". The mount commands
succeeds then. It is not necessary to make the credentials file
world-readable, only those who need to run "mount" need ability to read 
the file.

Maybe this behavior is intended. Since it is an interface change, it'd 
be nice to have a more informative error message. Instead of "unknown 
error", something like:

"Username" is not allowed to read credential file /etc/samba/credentials

Helge Hafting