"Windows workgroup is not accessible; do not have permission to use the network."

Other than EASILY browsing my Windows network, I have no problem connecting to other machines, such as my Samba server, as long as I do a search.

I'm thinking Samba is the problem; I may not have it configured properly.

I've tried to edit smbusers with "root = <windows accounts>", which is mapped to smb.conf: "user map = /etc/samba/smbusers"

Again, connectivity is not exactly the problem - I just have to do it the hard way.

So, to the point - I'd like to know what is causing this and how to make my network browsable again.

Thanks a lot!

Did you edit /etc/samba/smb.conf to use the same workgroup as the Windows workgroup? The default set by Samba is probably not right.

That isn't it. The workgroup is set, and on top of this, they have co-existed before.

It has been suggested to me that it may have to do with the smbusers file?

What is the syntax for that file?

<Linux user> = <Windows users> (in quotes?

If I mapped Windows accounts to Linux accounts, could that give my Windows accounts permission to view the workgroup?

*bump*

Have you actually even opened /etc/samba/smbusers and looked at it?

The first thing mine says is:Thus, that would be the syntax of the file. However, the fact that it says "SMB_name" indicates that the users should be added and enabled in smbpasswd; if said users are not authorized in that manner, it seems likely that adding them to smbusers may not be much help.

Have you done that (open terminal, su to root, smbpasswd -a -e <username> <password>)? Users must exist on your Linux system to be added to smbpasswd using this command (recreate the Windows user on the Linux system unless it's the guest account, which is already set in my smbusers, at least-- and possibly yours as well).

If you suspect that Samba is not properly configured, wouldn't it be useful to post the contents of /etc/samba/smb.conf so that we could check it? If the boxes have "co-existed" before, what has changed in your configuration between when it worked and when it didn't?

You say, "I have no problem connecting to other machines, such as my Samba server," as if the machine that is having problems is actually a Samba client, rather than a Samba server itself. This implies that there are more than two machines involved-- one which serves Linux shares (the Samba server); one which serves Windows shares (the Windows Samba server); and one which does not serve shares but reads shares from both (the Samba client). Is this in fact the case? Is the machine that cannot connect to the workgroup not sharing files from itself, but only trying to connect to shares from the Windows box? If so, can the actual Samba server (or any other involved box) connect to the workgroup? If so, then why are you messing about with Samba configuration-- as far as clients go, most of the configuration to allow a client to connect to a Windows workgroup needs to be done in Windows, and the message in any case specifically says that there's a network problem which probably means that either the actual network config is borked (perhaps unlikely since you can connect to other boxes), or that Windows is rejecting your authentication, which problem generally has to be solved in Windows.

How exactly are you trying to access the Windows shares? Via the command line? Via LinNeighborhood? Via Nautilus or Konqueror's SMB browsers? Some other way (like the GNOME SMB browser app, JAGS, or some other standalone SMB browser)? Are you trying to mount the Samba shares on the fly, or are they listed in /etc/fstab? If so, what is the exact listing or command that you're using?

Has it not occured to you that you need to bump the thread because you haven't given enough information for anyone to answer reliably, and maybe people don't feel like guessing in the dark this week?