hi everybody...
i've recently ventured into setting up samba to share files and printers with my windows friends in the network, and i didnt think i have much problem with it, luckily..except that i'm quite confused about the security configuration: that are user, share and others....right now i use share, but my lecturer/boss complained that he noticed a slight lag when trying to access network neighbourhood in windows 98. What could be the problem?

and another thing, he also asked, if it's possible, to make the samba workgroup in the network neighbourhood be transparent to other users, save the ones who are meant to use it. Is this possible?What i mean with being transparent is that other users cant see it,of course. Except the allowed ones...

THANKS a lot!

User security is where you set up 'shares' based upon users/groups. You can set up so that your windows users get a /home/username directory. You need to add them as linux users (ie useradd) and then as samba users (smbpasswd). If you want to keep the windows users from logging into the console on the server then change the shell (for the users) from /bin/bash to /bin/false. You could also create public folders with read-only or read/write based upon the groups. As well as the linux permissions, you can use mask bits in samba to alter the r/w behavior. If you're going to be adding lots of users, you'll want to customize the useradd scripts so the home dirs don't include all the .hidden and other funky linux-only info that is guranteed to confuse/scare the Winders people.

It's 3am here and I so totally don't understand the last question I don't even know what to ask.

thanks for the reply....that really clears things up with the security part...

sorry for the last question...i knew it was going to confuse people (especially at 3 am in the morning ...i apologize for that! What i mean with transparent samba is making the samba workgroup icon in network neighbourhood invisible to other network users, except of course the ones that are allowed to use it....what other users will see are other workgroups in the network, but not samba...what happens now is that i have curious uni folks using the network clicking on the samba workgroup icon and then complained that the network neighbourhood got hang ( they keep seeing the hourglass thing),so if samba is invisible, maybe i could prevent this.

personally i think it's impossible (given my limited understanding in this matter), but then, my lecturer said it is, and lecturers are always right ( they think)

THANKS!!!

I'll look into it as I'm bound to run into that problem sooner or later.

thanks and good luck..get back to me when you find the solution