Samba shares seen in windows, but cannot connect

samba

I am trying to setup samba shares for guest access for my home network. All I want to do is provide guest access so each family member has a remotely accessible directory so they can copy over files they want to backup. I do not want to give family members user accounts on the linux box, just guest access for samba. This is an example of one of my shares in my smb.conf file:

security = share

[Backups-Rhonda]
path = /raid1/rhonda
guest ok = yes
guest account = nobody
guest only = yes
browseable = yes
writable = yes

The shared paths have file permissions 666. I used smbpasswd to give a password to the nobody account on my debian box. Using smbstatus -v I can see that the Service is indeed connected to the Windows client. On the Windows clients I can see the shares so samba appears to be working.

However, the authentication fails on the Windows boxes. I always get a dialog that says You do not have permission to access..... I have tried map network drive... but that fails with a Location is not available W:\ is not accessible Access is denied dialog. I tried the Connect using different credentials under Map Network Drive, but still the same error dialog.

How do I get the Windows boxes to authenticate properly for simple guest access?

Best Answer

Add the following to your [global] section:

guest account = nfsnobody
map to guest = bad user

And your public share could look something like:

[Backups-Rhonda]
    path = /raid1/rhonda
    writable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    public = yes
    force user = root
    force group = root
    create mask = 666
    directory mask = 666
    security mask = 666
    force create mode = 666

Make sure to restart the samba service.

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