13 U4 to U5.3 - NAS user password erased

[thewizard]

Curious if anyone else saw this? Upgraded from 13.0 U4 to U5.3 and the user my Windows clients use to connect as a network drive had it's password literally erased. They started failing to connect on startup and no matter what password I tried for the user it didn't work. I know the password...

Going into FreeNAS GUI, under Accounts --> Users I found the NAS user I'd created for this purpose, and clicked edit and the password had been erased. Clicking the 'eye' icon showed nothing. Setting the password to what it was and clicking save immediately made the Windows clients mapped network drives connect with no changes on their side.

How does something like this happen?

 

[Davvo]

Iirc in the users tab the password is never shown.

 

[winnielinnie]

Iirc in the users tab the password is never shown.

Correct. They're stored as hashes in the host's /etc/spwd.db (or /etc/shadow for Linux). The GUI text fields for the password are only for creating a new password. If you leave it alone, nothing changes.

They started failing to connect on startup and no matter what password I tried for the user it didn't work. I know the password...

Something else might have happened in tandem with your upgrade and/or reboot of the NAS server. I doubt your user passwords just erased themselves. It could even have been a Windows issue of how it cached your credentials.

 

[thewizard]

Five different Windows devices all having the same issue at the same time? The instant I reset the password in FreeNAS GUI to what it I know it should be all the Windows boxes instantly reconnect without me having to do anything? What is more likely?

"Something else might have happened in tandem with your upgrade and/or reboot of the NAS server."

I agree more with the above line, which I why I thought I'd post here and see if anyone has had this kind of thing happen with U5.3, I've certainly never seen it in more than a decade of FreeNAS usage.

 

[winnielinnie]

The problem is, it's too late now to assess what happened. One of the first things I would have suggested is to see if the user's password works elsewhere, such as connecting via SSH. If successful, then it narrows it down to SMB (not the user or password). If it fails (with incorrect passphrase), then it alludes to something else.

What exactly "wiped" your passwords? I couldn't say. As far as I'm aware, these remain untouched after upgrades.

Did you notice anything else amiss besides the password issue? Did any other settings reset?

 

[thewizard]

Nope everything else seems to be working fine, all pools online, all datasets intact, all plugins working etc. VM's all still there too.

I'll try pull some logs later tonight. Very odd! Glad it's an isolated thing and I really appreciate you taking the time to reply.