So i work for a company that only has windows servers but today i finally convinced them to let me load Ubuntu 7.10 server onto an old server to show how functional it is and how it can really complement our already standing network.
So i loaded samba on it and i loaded the desktop interface for the other IT's. yet the problem is for some reason it is not allowing me to share a folder. I tried adding a folder in the shared folder window and yet it didnt work and it didnt make an icon in the box. So i tried making the folder in the file system and dragging and dropping and that didnt work. Yet it works when i dont point the folder anywhere (choosing none in the diraction). Yet here at home with ubuntu desktop 7.10 all of these ways work for sharing a folder with other windows computers. Any suggestions?

You haven't indicated anything about the windows network environment or your smb.conf configuration. Which security mode are you using? What kind of authentication is used on the network. You may want to post the General section of smb.conf and the share definition. Also, check if your samba package included the books: Samba 3 by Example, Samba 3 HOWTO & Reference Guide and Using Samba 3. They may be provided by a samba-doc package, or you could download them from the samba.org website. The Samba 3 by example has sample networks and configurations, starting with a read-only fileserver that can be accessed by anyone, up to a network using LDAP servers for configuration. The Howto & Reference guide is more theory oriented. Sometimes you need to map the network admin usergroup to a unix group. This book will cover the commands to do that. If your user network uses AD I would recommend purchasing the latest "Using Samba" book in the bookstore.

If you don't have a "security =" line in /etc/samba/smb.conf, then "security = user" is the default. One method is using adduser and smbpasswd to add a Linux user for each Windows user so that each Windows user and password maps to a Linux user and password. Another technique is allowing guest access to the share. There are other password backends as well. However you need to study up a bit so that you know what the best method is.

hmmm maybe my problem is more then file sharing! when i tried to do
"sudo gedit /ect/samba/smb.conf" it didnt pull up the config file, i can browse to it but i cant find the file through the terminal. for that matter i cant even "cd /ect"
weird....any suggestions?

well i ended up getting it to do a fileshare to my windows comp. which seemed much harder then all the other support forms and podcasts have made it out to be plus on top of what i did it at home, hmmm. oh well i guess?!

and i did the adduser in the terminal to add me and my supervisor to the linux machine so we can navigate to it, now i wish i could figure out how to get it so anybody else going to the machine never gets prompted

Now i just have to figure out how to get it on the domain

It sounds to mre like you need to change the domain information in the samba to reflect the following settings.
domain name = company.com (just and example)
wins support = yes
default winsserver = 0.0.0.0 (example ipaddress please change to the apropreate setting)
Which you should be able to get by getting on a windows box go start menu run and type cmd which will brin up a command prompt window in to which ypou should type ipconfig /all which will bring up all of the Tellcommunicastions Control Protocal/ Internet Protocall information if which you should be able to harvest the primary and secondarey wins server ip addresses.