Many many moons ago, all of the computers in my home (windows and linux alike) existed peacefully on the network. Samba allowed me to acess the windows computers from the linux ones, and vice versa. Then through the process up upgrading from redhat to slackware, slack 9 to 10, and reinstalling one of my windows computers, almost everything fell apart. First my two linux computers stopped being able to communicate. I would get around this by sending whatever file I needed to transfer to a windows machine, and then from there I would send it to the linux one. Now one of my linux computers has stopped communicating with the windows one. I've decided that I've put it off long enough, and I'm going to get things back up and working again.

The main problem I am having is that whenever I try to browse one of the computers (either through "view workgroup computers" in windows, or using "Smb4k" for linux) I am asked for a username and password. I never specified any specific samba password, nor wanted one. It's a small home network and I dont need the security. I try to type in my default username and password, and even my root username and password, but instead of saying that the password is incorrect, when I click ok the window just dissapears and then reappears a second later with nothing changed. No matter what I try, I cant access these computers. What I would like to do is set them up so that they all can be accessed without a password. If I cant do that, then I'd like to know where to add a password that I can use to browse these computers.

Any suggestions are appreciated,
LBB

The solution to the username / password problem:
in the global section of smb.conf you need to put in security = share
that will allow you to enter the specified samba server without any authentification, whereas if it was security = user, you would be prompted for a username and password, when trying to enter the samba server, or any other share.
Let's see an example:

[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = test
encrypt passwords = yes (if you don't have win 95 clients)
hosts allow = the first 3 fields of your networks ip , for ex ; 190.5.1. and with "," 127.0.0.1/subnetmask here
security = share
netbios name = SERVERNAME
guest account = pcguest

#ok, now let's make a share that is accesible by all on the lan, and everybody can write in it.
[test]
comment = test
path = /somewhere/over/here
guest only = yes
writable = yes
read only = no
#next it's a private folder for user LBB
[private]
comment = LBB's dir
path = %H (this means your home dir)
valid user = LBB
read only = no
public = no
writable = yes
browseable = yes

#you need to add the pcguest account to your /etc/passwd file. do this with adduser
#for any other user you need to add him in the smbpasswd , you can do this by smbpasswd -a #user
#hope this helps

Thank you so very much . I did as you said, and it's working just as well as it ever was.

-LBB