I've gotten samba set up and finally gotten the shares visible to other Ubuntu machines and my windows machine.

However when I connect to them I get a classic file not found message in both OSs, however they word it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this problem is a problem with my permissions on the computer sharing the shares. However, I don't know if that is correct much less how to remedy.

This is my smb.conf. The shares in the home folder (Documents, Music, Pictures..etc) are all the linux version of "shortcuts" to the actual directories that exist on /media/data. I assume I can do that. What are the linux versions of "shortcuts" called. (Ex. Navigating to /home/steve/documents is the same as navigating to /media/data/documents)

You probably want to put the paths in double quotes if you need spaces in them.
To make sure that is correct, run "testparm" to see if there any other errors in your "smb.conf" file.

Don't forget that file permissions on the server also matter. The connecting user(s) need to have read access to the files and directories to see them.

The "shortcuts" you are referring to are most likely called symbolic links in Linux. However from what I can see this looks like these are shortcuts to files that exist on another machine? /media/data/documents exists on what box?

Yes, symbolic links, that's what it was. I remember reading about them before I "used" them. I didn't remember what they were called.

Connecting users meed access? So what means that only two people can have accounts? Obviously I want access on the actual PC, so I (steve) needs to be the owner and have read and write access. Bob, however, I just want to read. Sam, however, I want to read and write. All I have is Owner, Group, and Others.

Another interesting thing is that I can not create a samba password. As soon as I do anything with smbpasswd I get a segmentation fault.

Well you are going to need smbpasswd to create smb passwords for the users. But first be sure that you have created the accounts on the server that hosts samba, one for bob, steve, and sam.

You can have that security setup with UGO (User, Group, Org/Other) on the shared directories , you (steve) are the U and you have rwx on the directories, put Sam into the G and give the G rwx, and poor old bob is not in the G, so give the O r-x.

Be purist in fact and make the owner root, and just you and steve are in the G with rwx.

So you have the user accounts and have set permissions on the shared folders, you have to make smbpasswd go otherwise no-one will be able to connect.

`smbpasswd -a steve` will create the account steve and you should be prompted for the password.

Once you have set it up you should be able to connect.

While getting this to go, make yourself and admin user on the share - I can't remember the option - it's admin = or something. It's in the man page for smb.conf