Well, I tried piggy-backing on other threads, without success. So, I am starting my own thread. I have a RH9.0 server running SAMBA2.2.7a. I have a correct xinetd.conf. My smb.conf is correct as far as I can tell. I can see the server on XP and Win98 boxes, but I can't connect. I cannot connect through the XP Network Places wizard. (The server is found, but there are no shares.) The Win98 Network Neighborhood sees the server and knows it is a SAMBA server, but returns a 'Permissions' error. The user and password are correct for the SAMBA server.

There are also some odd behavior on the Linux side. I can connect with smbclient using the hostname of the server but not the netbios name of the SAMBA server. I can also connect to the XP and Win98 shares quite well. Also, when I run smbclient, the reports are different for the Linux and the Windows connections - in particular domain, workgroup and master browser.

I know that this SAMBA box was running at one time. I think some of the problems can be attributed to the 2.2.7a, which I believe was a security update some months ago. I have uninstalled/reinstalled without success. I have tried stripped down smb.conf with no results. I am to the point where I am thinking about moving to Fefora and hoping this will get sorted out. Can anyone give me some direction to go?

Thanks.

The permissions error could be either the settings in the smb.conf for the share are wrong, the samba username/password are wrong or the linux permissions on the directory you are trying to share with Samba are wrong. Have a look in the samba logs to see what's happening when you try to connect.

Here's an extract from my smb.conf - I've set up individual user directories on the linux box as /away/data/username. I have linux users for each Windows users - their linux passwords are different from the Samba passwords. I set the Samba passwords using 'smbpasswd -a username' using the Windows passwords for each user. Therefore when each user connects he sees a share called data that is their own personal data directory.

When setting up the linux directories it is essential that the GID is root (so that the Samba server can control the shares) - the UID is a normal user.

[data]
comment = Network data directories
path = /away/data/%u
create mask = 0640
directory mask = 0750
guest ok = no
printable = no
read only = no
browseable = yes

I found that the thing to do when setting up Samba is to take it a step at a time - start with a simple share that's browseable and writable by everyone and then change the settings one at a time until you get it doing what you want.

i had a similar problem and i tried really everthing i could until it almost drove me crazy... i will spare you the whole story and all the details but in the end i tried a different network interface card and and suddenly everthing worked even with XP... in the end i found out that the reason was an obviously not fully developed driver for the gigabit network card. so my tip for you is, especially when you are quite sure that your smb.conf is ok, not to waste a lot of time on the software side but to check the hardware first, try a different card or a different driver. i would even give it a try if the network adapter seems to behave normal with all other protocols and tasks, as it did in my case, just try!

i hope it will help!

regards tokehs

Did you remember to do a smbpasswd -a username as root?