I am trying to access a shared drive. Here is part of my samba configuration:

[pihome]
comment= Pi Home
path = /disk1/
browseable=Yes
available = yes
read only = no
writeable=Yes
only guest=no
create mask=0777
directory mask=0777
public=no

I am trying to access this from a Mac.

and?

sorry...
it asks me to login when I try to paste a file onto the rpi share, and when I enter my local account information, it tells me that i "don't have permission to access some of the items."

I would guess that you need to add a samba password:

sudo smbpasswd -a username

If you are communicating with a Mac, then NFS would work better. Using Samba requires the Mac to translate its identification to a Windows form, and the Pi to translate that form back into its identification... and both the Mac and Pi already use the same methods.

So I did , showing the user, "pi". when I try to login on the mac, it shows my full name as the username. I reset the password, and tried the new password, and it rejects it. The only password it accepts is my Mac local user account, but then I get a "no permission" error message. I also tried "pi" as the username, and the new password, but that fails as well. I am trying to paste a item on the rpi.

So lets try this again... From the finders go menu select connect to server.
Enter for the server address:
smb://Pi_IP_Address

A window should pop up requesting authentication. You should use Pi for the username and the smb password you created on the Pi previously. If that works you should see another window with a list of shares. Hopefully you should see the pihome share. Select ok and your in.

Another method to transfer files is scp of sftp. You need to start the ssh server on the pi. The command syntax is:
scp filename pi@IP_address:/disk1/filename

For the first method, I am able to login. I select the share, and it comes up. I paste the item, and I get a prompt saying "Finder wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this". The pi username/password does not work. When I use my local mac user account login, it accepts, but them tells me that I don't have permission to paste to the destination.

What are the permissions on that directory.
ls -ld /disk1

Maybe this will help. Changing permissions for user pi will should work.

http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/201...-raspberry-pi/

Actually, there several bugs in the example in that link.

1. The fstab entry shown does not have the filesystem type field filled in, which will cause the mount to fail.

2. the UID=/GID= options only work for non-Linux native filesystems (udf/fat/vfat/ntfs/iso9660). This COULD cause the mount to fail, but it is also possible the options get ignored.

Normally, the filesystem root remains owned by root. What is done instead is that any file shares start with a directory within the filesystem. That way the protection of "lost+found" is maintained as remote hosts cannot make improper modifications or access files they are not supposed to have access to.

Between Mac OSX and Linux, it is better to use NFS. Samba is designed to work with Windows systems.

Thanks...

so disk1 permissions looks like this:

Are these good permissions to have to restrict access?

Yes should be.