Two machines are running Kubuntu 11.10, one Kubuntu 10.04 and two Linux
Mint 10, KDE. All have Samba and gadmin-Samba installed. Gadmin-Samba may
no longer be developed but it is in the repositories so hopefully that
means it's approved and stable.

I wonder if there is a bug somewhere that causes gadmin-Samba to fall back
to unencrypted passwords if the connection times out? That is the only
clue I've found and it isn't always found when the connection fails. The
stop, restart, run winbindd routine always fixes it, sometimes after
changing back the passwords to "encrypted", (default).

I really want (K)Ubuntu to be every bit as functional as Windows and this
is the only place where it has let me down. I'd like to think there is a
simple fix, or that I've made a configuration error... It is an issue that
I've been struggling with for at least 4 years.