I have (after much effort) managed to joined my RHES5 box to our windows domain. I need windoze users to be able to access a shared directory. At the moment, for the user to be able to access the directory (without being prompted for a login), they need to have an account on the linux box. The passwords do not need to match, but for some reason, the linux box needs to see an account with their domain name. Can I configure winbind or samba so that the account on the linux side is not necessary?

Sorry nobody has replied to your question. It's probably because this question has been asked and answered hundreds of times here. If you will search this web site you will probably find lots of other threads on this subject. Also, if you go to the Samba web site you will find lots of documentation. (www.samba.org)

Quick answer:
If you are using NTLM v2 or Active Directory then you should be able to direct your Samba server to use the domain user accounts.
If the Samba server is using Windows for Workgroups sharing and authentication is based on user logins then you will always need to have corresponding user accounts on the Samba server.

IMO:
I believe that Samba participation in a Windows domain is spotty. I would stay with making the Samba server a standalone workgroup type server.

Thanks for the advice. I think I will just leave it the way that it is then.