samba setup issues
 

OK so what it looks like is maybe I was doing a lot of unnecessary work. When I mapped to a windows share I thought I had samba working but only partially. I'm sorry but it's still really @&%((!( me off that I can't do anything with smb.conf.

Anyway, the end result I'm trying to reach is the linux box needs to mount to two different shares on a windows server. In order to do that I need to provide from the linux box the windows accounts designated for this purpose in order to authenticate and then access those shares. This will be done via a script and the password needs to be encrypted. I created a credentials file and the script would get the username and password from that. Sure the credential files could be set for root access only but when authenticating to the windows server I don't want the passwords across the network in plain text.

Passwords do not get passed in clear text.. They did 15+ years ago, but that's been addressed now. I just ran a capture on my linux server mounting an xp share - I can see the user name, share name, client version, etc. But the password is hashed using a challenge / response algorithm. Each time you connect, the password hash is different. Passwords for CIFS mounts can NOT be sniffed off the network.

You MIGHT be able to configure everything to force clear text passwords, but I highly doubt it.

The files installed might have been -ed if you're on your companies machinery. do to see who really owns the samba files. also check the mode to see if those are set properly.