I netinstalled etch (RC2) (kernel 2.6.18)the other day on an AMD64 3800+ dual core/Asus 8N5V MB with 1 GB and was pleasantly surprisedto see that it automatically saw my Windows machines and could access them. I was also surprised to see that evidently it was NOT doing this with Samba as evidenced by Synaptic showing Samba uninstalled and the Win machines unable to see the Linux box.

I installed Samba and the Windows boxes can now see the Linux box but I cannot log on. I haven’t installed a firewall yet on the Debian box so that’s not it. “Services” says that Samba is running. I’ve got the Linux user’s directory set up as a shared directory and browsable.

Under “Users and Groups” (Gnome), I set up a common group (workgroup) with no problem but the app crashes every time that I try to add a user.

And although the Linux machine could see the network printers on the Windows boxes, it could not print to them.

I’m a beginner and have run out of all the things that I learned with Fedora to check. Can anyone help me on this?

Here is my samba.conf. I tried to take out some of the obvious fluff but most of it, I just don’t know. I noticed that about halfway down in the users section it has a line "invalid user = root". That surprised me!

The dhcp.conf is empty.

Thanks for any help that you can provide.





#
# Sample configuration file for the Samba suite for Debian GNU/Linux.
#

#======================= Global Settings =======================

[global]

## Browsing/Identification ###

# Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of
workgroup = workgroup

# server string is the equivalent of the NT Description field
server string = %h server

# Windows Internet Name Serving Support Section:
# WINS Support - Tells the NMBD component of Samba to enable its WINS Server
; wins support = no

# WINS Server - Tells the NMBD components of Samba to be a WINS Client
# Note: Samba can be either a WINS Server, or a WINS Client, but NOT both
; wins server = w.x.y.z

# This will prevent nmbd to search for NetBIOS names through DNS.
dns proxy = no

# What naming service and in what order should we use to resolve host names
# to IP addresses
; name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast

#### Networking ####

# The specific set of interfaces / networks to bind to
# This can be either the interface name or an IP address/netmask;
# interface names are normally preferred
; interfaces = 127.0.0.0/8 eth0

# Only bind to the named interfaces and/or networks; you must use the
# 'interfaces' option above to use this.
# It is recommended that you enable this feature if your Samba machine is
# not protected by a firewall or is a firewall itself. However, this
# option cannot handle dynamic or non-broadcast interfaces correctly.
; bind interfaces only = true



#### Debugging/Accounting ####

# This tells Samba to use a separate log file for each machine
# that connects
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m

# Put a capping on the size of the log files (in Kb).
max log size = 1000

# If you want Samba to only log through syslog then set the following
# parameter to 'yes'.
; syslog only = no

# We want Samba to log a minimum amount of information to syslog. Everything
# should go to /var/log/samba/log.{smbd,nmbd} instead. If you want to log
# through syslog you should set the following parameter to something higher.
syslog = 0

# Do something sensible when Samba crashes: mail the admin a backtrace
panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d


####### Authentication #######

# "security = user" is always a good idea. This will require a Unix account
# in this server for every user accessing the server. See
# /usr/share/doc/samba-doc/htmldocs/Samba3-HOWTO/ServerType.html
# in the samba-doc package for details.
; security = user

# You may wish to use password encryption. See the section on
# 'encrypt passwords' in the smb.conf(5) manpage before enabling.
encrypt passwords = true

# If you are using encrypted passwords, Samba will need to know what
# password database type you are using.
passdb backend = tdbsam

obey pam restrictions = yes

; guest account = nobody
invalid users = root

# This boolean parameter controls whether Samba attempts to sync the Unix
# password with the SMB password when the encrypted SMB password in the
# passdb is changed.
; unix password sync = no

# For Unix password sync to work on a Debian GNU/Linux system, the following
# parameters must be set (thanks to Ian Kahan <<kahan@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> for
# sending the correct chat script for the passwd program in Debian Sarge).
passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
passwd chat = *Enter\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* .

# This boolean controls whether PAM will be used for password changes
# when requested by an SMB client instead of the program listed in
# 'passwd program'. The default is 'no'.
; pam password change = no

########## Domains ###########

# Is this machine able to authenticate users. Both PDC and BDC
# must have this setting enabled. If you are the BDC you must
# change the 'domain master' setting to no
#
; domain logons = yes
#
# The following setting only takes effect if 'domain logons' is set
# It specifies the location of the user's profile directory
# from the client point of view)
# The following required a [profiles] share to be setup on the
# samba server (see below)
; logon path = \\%N\profiles\%U
# Another common choice is storing the profile in the user's home directory
; logon path = \\%N\%U\profile

# The following setting only takes effect if 'domain logons' is set
# It specifies the location of a user's home directory (from the client
# point of view)
; logon drive = H:
; logon home = \\%N\%U

# The following setting only takes effect if 'domain logons' is set
# It specifies the script to run during logon. The script must be stored
# in the [netlogon] share
# NOTE: Must be store in 'DOS' file format convention
; logon script = logon.cmd

# This allows Unix users to be created on the domain controller via the SAMR
# RPC pipe. The example command creates a user account with a disabled Unix
# password; please adapt to your needs
; add user script = /usr/sbin/adduser --quiet --disabled-password --gecos "" %u

########## Printing ##########

# If you want to automatically load your printer list rather
# than setting them up individually then you'll need this
; load printers = yes

# lpr(ng) printing. You may wish to override the location of the
# printcap file
; printing = bsd
; printcap name = /etc/printcap

# CUPS printing. See also the cupsaddsmb(8) manpage in the
# cupsys-client package.
; printing = cups
; printcap name = cups

# When using [print$], root is implicitly a 'printer admin', but you can
# also give this right to other users to add drivers and set printer
# properties
; printer admin = @ntadmin


############ Misc ############

# Using the following line enables you to customise your configuration
# on a per machine basis. The %m gets replaced with the netbios name
# of the machine that is connecting
; include = /home/samba/etc/smb.conf.%m

# Most people will find that this option gives better performance.
# See smb.conf(5) and /usr/share/doc/samba-doc/htmldocs/Samba3-HOWTO/speed.html
# for details
# You may want to add the following on a Linux system:
# SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
socket options = TCP_NODELAY

# The following parameter is useful only if you have the linpopup package
# installed. The samba maintainer and the linpopup maintainer are
# working to ease installation and configuration of linpopup and samba.
; message command = /bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/linpopup "%f" "%m" %s; rm %s' &

# Domain Master specifies Samba to be the Domain Master Browser. If this
# machine will be configured as a BDC (a secondary logon server), you
# must set this to 'no'; otherwise, the default behavior is recommended.
; domain master = auto

# Some defaults for winbind (make sure you're not using the ranges
# for something else.)
; idmap uid = 10000-20000
; idmap gid = 10000-20000
; template shell = /bin/bash
;
; The following was the default behaviour in sarge
; but samba upstream reverted the default because it might induce
; performance issues in large organizations
; See #368251 for some of the consequences of *not* having
; this setting and smb.conf(5) for all details
;
; winbind enum groups = yes
; winbind enum users = yes

#======================= Share Definitions =======================

wins support = no
[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no

# By default, the home directories are exported read-only. Change next
# parameter to 'yes' if you want to be able to write to them.
writable = no

# File creation mask is set to 0700 for security reasons. If you want to
# create files with group=rw permissions, set next parameter to 0775.
create mask = 0700

# Directory creation mask is set to 0700 for security reasons. If you want to
# create dirs. with group=rw permissions, set next parameter to 0775.
directory mask = 0700

# Restrict access to home directories
# to the one of the authenticated user
# This might need tweaking when using external authentication schemes
valid users = %S

# Un-comment the following and create the netlogon directory for Domain Logons
# (you need to configure Samba to act as a domain controller too.)
;[netlogon]
; comment = Network Logon Service
; path = /home/samba/netlogon
; guest ok = yes
; writable = no
; share modes = no

# Un-comment the following and create the profiles directory to store
# users profiles (see the "logon path" option above)
# (you need to configure Samba to act as a domain controller too.)
# The path below should be writable by all users so that their
# profile directory may be created the first time they log on
;[profiles]
; comment = Users profiles
; path = /home/samba/profiles
; guest ok = no
; browseable = no
; create mask = 0600
; directory mask = 0700

[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = no
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
public = no
writable = no
create mode = 0700

# Windows clients look for this share name as a source of downloadable
# printer drivers
[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
browseable = yes
read only = yes
guest ok = no
# Uncomment to allow remote administration of Windows print drivers.
# Replace 'ntadmin' with the name of the group your admin users are
# members of.
; write list = root, @ntadmin

# A sample share for sharing your CD-ROM with others.
;[cdrom]
; comment = Samba server's CD-ROM
; writable = no
; locking = no
; path = /cdrom
; public = yes

# The next two parameters show how to auto-mount a CD-ROM when the
# cdrom share is accesed. For this to work /etc/fstab must contain
# an entry like this:
#
# /dev/scd0 /cdrom iso9660 defaults,noauto,ro,user 0 0
#
# The CD-ROM gets unmounted automatically after the connection to the
#
# If you don't want to use auto-mounting/unmounting make sure the CD
# is mounted on /cdrom
#
; preexec = /bin/mount /cdrom
; postexec = /bin/umount /cdrom


[VulcanHome]
path = /home/vulcan
available = yes
browseable = yes
public = yes
writable = yes

Your smb.conf looks fine to me, except I would uncomment this line
workgroup=workgroup on Windows box as well?
to create a new samba user and password on your linux box try this from terminal as root
I like to have all these installed:
samba
samba-common
smbclient
smbfs
If your attempting to browse windows files with samba and nautilus make sure you have libgnomevfs2-extra installed.
Here's a good guide to network printing:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Debian-and-Win...ared-Printing/
Here are a couple of commands I found helpful for printer config
To get a list of the share names on a Windows computer
To get a list of Netbios names on your network type
I was miss-identifying hardware and share names in cups when setting up remote printer.
I believe the "invalid user=root" is a security measure. You wouldn't want someone accessing your machine as user root through samba.

I'll get these changes made. Thanks so much for your help.