SOLVING SAMBA PROBLEMS WITH WINDOWS PASSWORDS

Samba provides a useful set of tools for creating bidirectional network connections between Windows and Linux systems, but a number of problems can prevent Samba from working properly. This Linux Tip assumes the following scenario: You've correctly installed Samba, configured smb.conf, you can see the Linux system from the Windows Network Neighborhood dialog box, and you can only see your Linux box in the Linux version of Network Neighborhood (such as LinNeighborhood or smbclient).

What's wrong? Here are two very likely possibilities:

1. Windows networking protocols require the same user name on both systems. If you're logged in as "ted," you won't be able to connect to the Windows boxes unless they're also configured with an account called "ted," and this account must be logged in.

2. If the Windows PCs are running recent versions of Windows (Win 98 with Service Pack 2 installed or anything more recent, including Windows 2000), you'll need to disable encrypted passwords on the Windows boxes. Look in the Samba documentation directory (on Red Hat systems, this is located in the Samba directory in/usr/share/doc) for files containing the registration key ("reg key") for the version of Windows you want to modify. In the Windows system, click Start, choose Run, type regedit, and click OK; when the Registration Editor opens, navigate to the appropriate location and change the default value as instructed in the Samba documentation.