Samba cannot connect

But I do remember wrestling with it ages ago, then I ditched Windows and just used SSHFS (solved all my issues...! :D)

A few things come to mind, firstly have you checked the Samba log to see if there are any hints there on what the issue may be?

Second and third come from a quick browse of your conf (to be clear though, this is the first time I've had a good look at it, I always just used Webmin...). Second is perhaps you should try turning off password encryption just to see if you can pinpoint the caause of your issues. Third is that comparing the last 3 entries, home folders aren't browseable, perhaps this is how you want it, but again, perhaps allow access to home folders to see if it the share that is the issue or the user..., also www doesn't have any declaration about users, permissions, etc - I don't know but I suspect that may be problematic?! (so just guessing really...)

Jeremy, thanks for the reply.  I will try your suggestions, don't have time an the moment.  I have tried the configuration via webmin, but got the same results.  I have also tried the same basic config that is on the host machine (works), but it won't work on tkl virtual machine.  For now I have it working with 'Share level' set and all the perms open.  Since this is on a private dev network, I'm not as conserned, I just hate not solving the issue.  When I have time to t/s some more, I will post the results.

I'll also look into SSHFS.

Thanks again.

Hendrick, thanks for your reply.  I have indeed added the user accounts to both linux and samba.  I matched all 3, local machine, linux, and samba credentials.  Access is seamless on the host ubuntu system (I am not prompted, as the local W7 machine passes through user/pw).  However on the TKL guest (debian 6), this doen't work, I'm continually prompted.

I am new to Linux, just been using Linux for several months but I managed to install Samba server on my local network with Ubuntu server 12.

Based on my experience Samba will not accept your OS user name and password. Samba will accept your username and password only if you have added it to smbpasswd, in other words if your user name and password is not added, you will not able to access any files. You may add your OS user name and password or different user name and password. It is there for security reason otherwise anybody with his own username and password can access Samba.

It would be easier to configure this from CLI. 

I would suggest you first add all usernames and passwords to smbpasswd, then change the owners and groups of  files to be accessed by the users. After this is done, you can configure smb.conf

After the configuration, test it from the CLI using testparm

Good luck!

After my last reply, I played a little more and some how it works now, but not exaclty sure what fixed it.

• Tried to run testparm from Hendrick's post, it was not recognized, so I had to install samba-common-bin
• Re-ran config via webmin - at first was getting no access after password (was different response at least)
• Played with config setting trying a couple options, like share level vs user level, turning off pw encrypt, etc
• Ran another pass through config,  reset passwords (yet again), restarted server...
• volia - it worked - new config below (stripped of comments).

Thanks for everyones help.

#======================= Global Settings =======================

It appears the issue was actually resolved with the samba-commons-bin install.  I had another guest that was cloned so it was exacly the same.  When I copied the config to that server it still didn't work until I did the  samba-commons-bin install.  I didn't realize it was required.