Objective: To share a folder on Linux computer so WinXP computers can access it.
Problem: I can see the folder, but can't access it. "Not accessible".

I am running Gnome on Fedora Core 7 (default install) and attempting to get Samba to work.

Logged in as root, I create a share- "/var/www/shared"
I made it "Writable" and "Visible".
I "Allow access to everyone" just to test it.
Workgroup name FC
Authentication is User
I added a user, password and windows user

Restarted to make sure everything took affect, but no access to folder.

Any suggestions?
Jenny

Look in the logs in /var/log/smbd or /var/log/samba. See if any errors are given there.

"Permission Denied" is all the log says.

...I also tried completely disabling the firewall.

Hello jenny

There is one thing that catches a lot of people out with samba and that is the question of users. It may be your problem.

If you have a user on Windows then that same user must exist on your Linux machine as a regular Linux user and must have access to the directory you are trying to share.

That same user must also be a user created specifically in Samba and have the same username and password for it to all operate seamlessly.

So to put it simply, you would have a user jenny on your windows machine with the password 1234.

You would create a regular Linux user jenny with password 1234

And then a samba user jenny with password 1234

If you haven't come across it, the samba user can be created two ways in Fedora.

system-config-samba

from a root command line will give you the samba configuration utility. But you can also do it with:

smbpasswd -a jenny
jenny
and be prompted for the password.

The Linux user jenny must have access to the shared folder. It is possible to restrict access to the folder through samba as well and in the samba configuration gui above you can restrict access to shares to individual users or leave it open to all.

Yes, I tried the exact same username and password for Linux user, WinXP user and Samba user... still no access. I get the error:
"Share is not accessible. You may not have permission".

I tried changing the Linux and Samba usernames from the WinXP username and I could access my home folder, but not the shared folder. I received a different error:
"Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed."

Hello Jenny

When I make a folder shared off /var/www it is owned by root and is useable only by root and presumably anyone who is a member of the root group.

As normal users are not created with any of roots privileges I won't be able to access that share as a normal user unless I change ownership of the folder.

Have you tried that?

One thing that you might try as well is to create a forder directly off / and change its ownership to your usual user and see if you can share that. I certainly have no trouble there and we could certainly compare configurations.

There is a useful diagnostic to see just what you are sharing from a Linux box.

On that machine open a terminal window in the name of one of your users and issue the command:

That's the name of the machine I'm sitting at now and the output of the command is:

Which tells me just what things samba is sharing for that user on this machine.

Edit: It's all got a bit compressed horizontally in the copy and paste I'm afraid but it'll do to compare.

Yes, I tried giving ownership of the shared folder to my Samba user and still no access... although I can access my home directory and create/delete files.

Still sounds like a permission thing? ... since I can access my home folder.

*************edit!
Ahhh.... SUCCESS! I logged in as the Samba user and created a folder, then logged in as root and shared that folder and it worked! I think the problem was that my user had no permissions on the /var folder and everything under it.

Jenny