I discoverd system-config-samba and installed it on my ubuntu 8.10, It installed in the system/administration menu. When I ran it, I found only a printer installed, so I added the folders that I had previously shared. Voila! Windows (XP Profession SP2) now accessed the files.

Sorry, I forgot to mention the actual process:

Click "Add Share"
Browse and select the folder to share, click OK
click it writable (if you want) and Visible
Click on Access tab
Add a user access
click OK

sorry, this post is a little old.

I had the same problem and in windows XP the message was the same: i dont have permissions for accessing that directory, what i did was the following:

I give all permissions to the directory with "chmod" command in linux, for example, in my case, in the terminal:

chmod 777 /home/edier88

with that, you are giving all type of permissions to the directory you want:

chmod 777 "path of directory"

if you want to see what kind of permissions do you have in that directory, you can enter the following command in the directory that you are in the momment:

ls -lag

for example, if you are in "/etc" when you enter the "ls -lag" command you will see all the permissions that you have in all folders and files in "/etc".
I will give you some links where you can learn more about this:

---------- Post added 05-18-11 at 01:13 PM ----------

http://catcode.com/teachmod/

http://www.mediacollege.com/linux/command/chmod.html

I just had this problem on XP Pro from two of my nautilus home folder samba shares and found a simple solution to solve it. Before I explain I've been reading all of these posts and have come to the conclusion that it seems that many linux users tend to fall into this trap of trying the most advanced and complex solutions first. Before I tried any of these methods I went into my home folder and right clicked on properties>permissions>second category (the middle one under the owner section and above the others) select the drop down menu and change from your root name to "samba share" and select whatever permissions you want (read, create etc...) and click apply to enclosed files. That solved my issue without having to type in a lot of cryptic terminal commands.

A couple of side notes...

If you just want to move files between the XP and Linux machines try installing an ssh server (openssh for example) on the Linux machine and using WinScp on the XP machine. More secure than Samba and very easy to do.

And - be ware of your Windows firewall. Many years back I setup a Red Hat 7.x server. I wanted to use nfs but could not find an affordable nfs client for XP. I read about Samba and set it up and got it working. For a while. After a couple of months it just stopped in mid stream while I was watching a video stored on the server from my XP machine. I screwed with the thing for the better part of a year. Upgrading Samba, uninstalling and reinstalling Samba. Uninstalling and reinstalling Linux etc. I finally gave up and setup an ftp server on the Linux machine.

One day I happened to be updating my firewall on the XP machine (Zonealarm). When it shut down during the install, the Samba shares on the Linux machine popped into view (in network neighborhood or whatever - has been a long time). When I rebooted to complete the install the Samba server was gone again. I killed Zonealarm and the Samba server appeared. It seems that, after working for several months, Zonealarm decided to protect the PC against other machines in its workgroup.

Provided your network is reasonably protected, behind a router for example, temporarily disabling software firewalls will often "fix" these sort of issues. Then it is a matter of configuring the firewall to allow the appropriate traffic.

Ken

I've also had issues with Zone Alarm. Even between 7 and XP shares let alone samba. I use Comodo Internet Security and when a new network is detected it has a tick for "I want to be fully accessible to all pcs in this network" works just fine. no need for zone alarm or the crappy windows firewall.