Techno-virgin here. Having frustrations over Samba-

Trying to set up RedHat Linbox as a file server on my Windows LAN.
I can see the workgroup>shared folder and printers in network neighborhood- YEah!!- but when I try to logon I am prompted for username and password. I use the correct username/password that has been set up on Samba and also matches my winXP machine name\logon, but nothing happens. I mean nothing. No error message, no nada. I try reconfiguring usernames/encrypt vs. unencrypt pw, user=share, whatever, but I get the same results. Can anybody anybody help???? I've been all over the boards but haven't found a remedy that a techno-naive person can handle. Will post conf. file if that is helpful.

Please post your config file.

AmBeRfromAtlanta,

I'm not an expert, but I've been running a fully functional 25-user Red Hat 8.0 Samba fileserver/printserver at my company for 2+ years now. When I set it up, I ran into similar problems. Here's a list of what I had to do to achieve success:

1. I had to create a domain and have everyone log into it for sharing to work right (more so for printing, as I recall). You probably know this already, but Win XP Home doesn't work with domains.

2. In the /etc/samba/smbpasswd file, I had to create a machine name for each computer, in addition to the individual user names. This machine name must exactly match the computer name in the user's My Computer/Network Identification tab. You can do this manually with the smbpasswd -a -m command, or you can do as I did and put the following line in your smb.conf file:

add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd -d dev/null -g machines -s /bin/false -M %m$

which will automatically add the machine name whenever you are adding a computer to the Domain from the user's desktop.

3. For Win XP Professional, you must run a registry patch on the user desktops called SignOrSeal_and_SignSecureChannel.reg for the logon process to work-- I don't know why-- I'm sure plenty other forum members know much more about this than I do.

I apologize if all this is a little bit sketchy. Like I said, I'm no expert. But it works.

Good luck.

DMCKEE Never suggest some newbie to directly implement SAMBA as a PDC.
It will make him even more frustating of samba.

Dear Amber

First of all dont get frustated. you need to keep yourself cool a bit. SAMBA is easy but sometimes a small mistake could lead you into further problems.

Post your SMB.CONF

And for the time, let me clear you few things...

As if you mentioned that your samba n XPP logins are same & again you mentioned you are getting prompt to enter username password while accessing your samba share thru XP.
You should not get prompt again for entering user : pass combination if your XP credentials were accepted by samba.

So do this :
1. Add you 'root' user to samba with
smbpasswd -a -e root

2. add you user login to samba also & also enable it.
smbpasswd -a -e <XP-username>
-a is for adding
-e is for enabling the user

Restart samba service & check back on XP.

Feed me back.

It works!!!! It works!!! Yippeeee!