Hi,

I'm new to samba and I cannot get it to work.
I have Mandrake 9.0 which comes with Samba 2.2.6pre2

I have the default install settings running. The only think I've changed is I changed my workgroup name from mdkgroup to @home so it would be on the same workgroup as my Windows XP box.

When I try to login to the linux box from Windows by double clicking on the computer from the workgroup computers area. It prompts me for a login.
I try typing in a username and password that exists on the linux box. That doesn't work. I also try the username nobody with various passwords.
When I enter a username and password it changes the username to from for example:
nobody to WINDOWSCOMPUTERNAME\nobody

when I try to change WINDOWSCOMPUTERNAME to the ip of the linux box (because it asks me to put a domain there) it actually attempts to login for about 3 seconds then fails.

I guess my question is where do I have to setup and username and password so that I can login to my linux box using samba from windows XP?

Thanks for any help, this is real important to me.

change ur security settings in smb.conf to "SHARE"

Ok, that helped
Now I see 3 icons:
pdf-generator
Printers and Faxes
network folder icon with my username

When i double click on the folder with my username I try and enter the password for my username and it doesnt let me in. Windows has grayed out the username field which says Linux\Guest

What username and password should I be using? How do I set that up?

Samba accounts must have corresponding local accounts. So this gives you 2 choices.
a) As root, type smbpasswd -a <local username>
b) As root, create a new local user. Then do smbpasswd -a <new username>

Then make sure the user you want to access the share is included in the list of valid users for the share.

Hope this helps

thanks. That worked
You guys are great.

Ok. It now connects by default to the same user as I'm logged into on windows. Is there a way to set it up so I'm prompted for a username and password so I can login as a user other than the one I'm using on windows (which is the same as one of the users on my linux box).

Are you able to change the username or is it grayed out? If its not grayed out, theres nothing that can be done. Windows just tries to guess what username you want to connect as. If its grayed out, I am not sure what to tell you. I'll investigate more.

since i have the same user on both the linux and windows box windows doesnt even prompt me with a login box.

I've added 2 users to the smbpasswd file but only 1 shows up in the network folders.

Right now I see 4 icons when I click on my linux box from winxp:
homes
netlogon
username1
Printers and Faxes

Not sure why all my usernames dont show up or how I can get another one to show up.

Hmmm have you rebooted your Windows box? If not, it may just be that Windows is using the same user/password as was used the time before. I know that Windows does do that. I don't know how to get around that, I've wanted to know how for quite awhile... a reboot is the only means I've found. Maybe logging off and then logging back on on the Windows box would work though too...

I think that only one username shows up for your folders because a user can -only- write to his/her own folder. If you are able to logon with a different user later, you should see a folder for that name and not the previous one.

Ok. I logged off and logged back on. Now I can see the other folder. It's still logging me automatically under my windows username/password. I believe if I change my windows password so that it is different from the linux password (i know this was a bad practice) it should prompt me for a login box.

Im running too many programs to do a reboot right now. So I'll have to give it a try later. But I think this should work.

I may just add both users to the same group so they will both have the same read/write access.

When the account on the windows box and the account on the linux box have different passwords then windows would not log me in automatically and I was prompted for a password.
So everything is working great now.

Thanks for all the help.

Awesome, glad to hear it works perfectly for you now. Glad I was able to help.