Excessive Samba messages in logs, how to mediate?

Question

Samba is constantly spewing messages into the logs that are of no use. How can I mitigate these messages so that log reporting softwere (logcheck) does not have to report them. The cause of the messages is also somewhat mysterious, so any tips on interpreting them is also welcome. System is latest Ubuntu LTS server.

Jun  3 12:22:43 xxx nmbd[zzz]: [2011/06/03 12:22:43,  0] nmbd/nmbd_browsesync.c:350(find_domain_master_name_query_fail)

Jun  3 12:22:43 xxx nmbd[zzz]:   Unable to find the Domain Master Browser name WORKGROUP<1b> for the workgroup WORKGROUP.

Jun  3 12:22:43 xxx nmbd[zzz]:   Unable to sync browse lists in this workgroup.

Jun  3 12:34:51 xxx smbd[yyy]: [2011/06/03 12:34:51,  0] lib/util_sock.c:539(read_fd_with_timeout)

Jun  3 12:34:51 xxx smbd[yyy]: [2011/06/03 12:34:51,  0]

Answer 1

You can change how verbose samba's logging is with these two options in your smb.conf file:

log level = N
syslog = N

… where N is between 0 and 10. The first controls it's own separate log file and the second controls the data it sends to the syslog daemon.