I'm having some issues. I'm trying to access my linux machine's samba shares from one of my Windows machine. I have read though a few different guides that goo through setting up samba and having it let a windows machine access it.

My network is set up as follows. I have cable, coming in through a router that my computers are hooked up on. My router does the DHCP. On my windows machine I can see my linux computer, but when I try to access it I am told I do not have permissions to access it.

From my linux box, I can only see the linux box itself in the samba shares, but none of my other windows machines. I can ping between all of my computers.

Any suggestions. I'm totally lost and have been working on this for 2 days now.

Could you post your smb.conf?

If Windows boxes can see your Samba shares, it could be permissions or make sure that security is set to share and not user if you just need simple file and print sharing. But if you prefer a user security, you have to create users in /etc/passwd and then give them all passwords.

If you want only file sharing, here is my example:

------------------------------ Share Definitions ------------------------

[ourshare]
comment = Linux share on Samba
path = /usr/local/samba/ourshare
public = yes
read only = no
create mode = 777
directory mode = 777

# mkdir -m 1777 -p /usr/local/samba/ourshare

If you prefer share that will ask your Windows users for password everytime they will connect:

[ourshare]
comment = Linux share on Samba
path = /usr/local/samba/ourshare
public = no
read only = no
create mode = 770
directory mode = 770

# mkdir -m 770 -p /usr/local/samba/ourshare
# useradd username
# passwd username

Repeat with other users.

In your /etc/passwd there should be a system default user "user" with a GID of maybe 100 if I'm not mistaken coz I'm out of my OpenBSD box and I can't check it now and in Linux there should always be.

# cat /etc/passwd |grep user

It should post a "user" user if there is in that file.

# chown root.user /usr/local/samba/ourshare

Or create a different group:

# groupadd yourgroup
# chown root.yourgroup /usr/local/samba/ourshare

In this case, security = user should be in your [global] configurations.