Create a Samba User on Ubuntu
If you are using Samba Server on your network, you will want to create users that have access to use it. There’s a very simple command structure on how to do so.
I’m assuming that you’ve already installed Samba Server at this point.
There are two steps to creating a user. First we’ll run the smbpasswd utility to create a samba password for the user.
sudo smbpasswd -a <username>
Next, we’ll add that username to the smbusers file.
sudo gedit /etc/samba/smbusers
Add in the following line, substituting the username with the one you want to give access to. The format is <ubuntuusername> = “<samba username>”. You can use a different samba user name to map to an ubuntu account, but that’s not really necessary right now.
<username> = “<username>”
Now you can create samba shares and give access to the users that you listed here.
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Thanks for this tip. I was trying to get Mac OS 10.4.something to access a samba share on my Ubuntu file server and this did the trick. One small detail to note is that /etc/samba/smbusers file did not exist on my system (feisty fawn). However, just creating the file is the designated directory was all I had to do.
I have no success with this method. I have installed Samba on a Debian Linux box and trying to connect from a Windows XP professional box. On the Windows box I have logged on using my corporate domain account. I created an /etc/samba/smbusers file and tried with both username= “domain\windows username” and username = “windows username”. It always prompts me for an username/password box. Am I missing something here ? Thanks.
Thanks!
Sweet, that worked. Like Atomicron, I had no file at /etc/samba/smbusers, but that was apparently not necessary for me. Just running the smbpasswd command was enough to get the user access.
I assume the difference is just due to newer versions of Ubuntu/Samba, as this was originally posted over a year and a half ago.
Hi,
I need to create multiple user in samba server not one by one, At the same time have to create multiple user. how to create this??
I am running Samba on Xubuntu, and your method did not work for me. Here is what I had to do:
(in curlies are variables you must change for your own setup)
sudo useradd -s /bin/true (user-name) | this creates the user
sudo smbpasswd -L -a (user-name) | this will prompt you for a password
sudo smbpasswd -L -e (username) | this enables the user
–and then to verify–
smbclient -L (your server name) -U(user you created)
–I didn’t create these steps, I just copied them from other sources and they worked for me on Xubuntu–
I’m sorry, but your “howto” won’t work. Samba needs a unix user!
$ sudo adduser blah
$ sudo smbpasswd -a blah
Is the correct way. If you run a ldap backend, you can run:
$ sudo smbldap-useradd -a blah -P
and smbldap-tool will take care of unix user creation.
Thanks…this was the simplest solution to the problem. I always seem to forget how to do this when I reformat and this was very concise and direct to the point. Thanks!
I disagree with James, Bobs instructions worked great.
I did not create and Linux\Unix accounts.
Created samba users as follows and accessed the shares from Windws Xp clients.
sudo useradd -s /bin/true (user-name) | this creates the user
sudo smbpasswd -L -a (user-name) | this will prompt you for a password
sudo smbpasswd -L -e (username) | this enables the user
–and then to verify–
smbclient -L (your server name) -U(user you created)
All created samba user accounts were also accessable from webmin Web GUI console.
Al: you should learn that “useradd” creates a _linux_ account (user), not the samba one.
The only difference to a regular user is that its shell is set to /bin/true (i.e. no shell, the command would just return “true” return code) and therefore such a linux user cannot login on console/GMD/KDM/SSH… Also, even that the user is added /etc/passwords, its home directory is not created.