SAMBA and Windows

[Derek Broughton]

Carlos Barros wrote:

> Hi list!
> I've spent last night trying to share a printer with my Windows XP, and
> gave up. Well, the problem is: Windows ALWAYS ask for a password,

As it should.  The simplest workaround is to make your Windows password the
same as the Samba (smbpasswd) password.  

> even to list the shares! And the worst, I had to manually sudo smbpasswd
> user to set a password (is there a GUI way????). 

Not afaik.  I don't understand why Samba can't use regular pam routines and
standard unix password methods.  Someone tried to explain it to me once,
but it seems wrong.

> Ok, here is my doubt: 
> Is it possible to make Windows access a share (and list available ones)
> without a password?? I know Linux does this, but all you know, windows
> is kinda stupid :)

Linux doesn't do it any more than Windows does - I just expect you set the
same password in smbpasswd as you specified in your personal network
configuration.  With Windows you have to do the same - so either have the
same password on both machines, or what I have done to allow my (XP) work
machine to access my (linux) laptop is create a user (broughtond) on the
laptop with the XP username, NO login access, and the same UID as my laptop
user (derek).  Now add that user (broughtond) to the Samba user database
with smbpasswd, setting the password to the same value used on the XP
machine.  Now, nobody can actually log in to my machine with broughtond,
but broughtond does have access to shares.
-- 
derek