aah, the power of perseverence....
the only reason i didn't post my smb.conf is because in the past, the responses i got weren't very specific or they just kind of brushed aside the problem (which is understandable, since samba is such a powerful and extremely option-filled program); i just wanted to see what a smb.conf file that worked looked like
well, it seems that it was never my smb.conf file that was the problem, but my misunderstanding of how samba (and windows networking) works: the fact that each user needs some sort of verification before being able to access shared resources (and that computers won't magically detect broadcasted shares)
so for those who are having problems with samba: the first thing to understand is authentication (in this case for windows98/ME); the same username and password must be on both the windows and linux box
for example, if you login as bob on your windows machine with the password blabla123, in order to access your linux box, you will need to do in linux
su
adduser (follow onscreen instructions to add user bob with password blabla123)
smbpasswd -a bob (when prompted, give blabla123 as the password)
now your linux box will have a user named bob with his own home directory and who also can be authenticated by samba in the smbpasswd file
now you can go ahead and configure the smb.conf file (either manually or through localhost:901 for swat)
here is my (working) smb.conf file:
# Samba config file created using SWAT
# from 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1)
# Date: 2004/04/09 22:43:26
# Global parameters
[global]
workgroup = MSHOME
security = USER
null passwords = Yes
ldap ssl = no
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/private/smbpasswd
[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no
read only = no
create mode = 0750
[public]
comment = Public Stuff
path = /mnt/2winData
public = yes
writable = yes
printable = no
*notes: of course this isn't secured (yet), but if you use a router for your network with good security there, you don't need to worry too much about enabling ssl for samba unless you have extremely important data that you cannot risk having stolen;
also, the [homes] share is an automatically-configuring share which will allow the user on a windows machine to have access to his respective /home/user on the linux box
**special acknowledgement and thanks to
www.tldp.org (The Linux Documentation Project)!